Dragonball New Beginnings: The Arlean Saga
by KyLewin
Summary: A sequel to The Ammit Saga. A strange change has come over the newest Z Fighter and one by one the protectors of Earth and their families are falling prey to an unknown threat.
1. Introduction and A Disturbing Experience

**Disclaimer:**

I in no way, shape, or form own any of Dragonball Z, or GT. The idea behind the main character of this story (who is an O.C.) comes from the incomplete story Dragonball Next (there's a link to it on my bio page if you're interested) and the character Icalla was created by Toni the Mink. If anyone were to use any character that I create for my story I probably would never notice and most likely wouldn't care, so go for it (though if you wanted to let me know about, I'd be interested in reading whatever you write).

**Introduction:**

This is a sequel to my first story, _Dragonball New Beginnings: The Ammit Saga_. It takes place a few years after the original; Akira, Pan, and Bra are all in college now. Bra is living in the same town as her parents and is planning on doing an internship at Capsule Corp. Pan lives with her best friend, Zori (who has had Akira's resurrection explained to her), and one of Zori's friends named Stacy; the three of them attend West Satan University. Akira is going to East Satan University and is living in the dorms. Everyone else is pretty much doing whatever it is they do when they aren't fighting bad guys.

All speech is designated with double quotation marks, all thoughts with single quotation marks and italics, and all telepathy is designated by {} around it.

**Unnecessarily Longwinded Summary of _The Ammit Saga_:**

For anyone who needs a refresher or who wants to read this story, but not its 100,000 word predecessor, here is a long summary of what happened in the _Ammit Saga_, for those of you who would actually like to read it (I personally think it was pretty good) and not have all of the surprises ruined for you, I suggest you not read any farther and instead go read my only other story. Those of you who already know what happened, just skip to the next bold type.

_The Ammit Saga_ takes place a few years after DBGT ended. It tells the tale of the Z-Fighters as they once again fight an evil force that threatens the universe and introduces a new character named Akira. Akira is roughly Pan's age and while the Z Fighters compete in the latest Tenkaichi Budoukia, it is discovered (as much to his surprise as anyone else's) that he is a Saiyan (with a tail) and a powerful one at that. Akira wins the tournament, but is killed when an alien attacks during the crowning ceremony, sacrificing himself to save Pan (the two had grown close during the tournament, despite a rocky beginning to their relationship).

Akira is sent to train with King Kai and has a few adventures in the Other World, the most notable of which was the discovery of his past. Thanks to the Supreme Kai, the young Saiyan learns that he was somehow formed from Goku's soul, which is why he is as strong as he is and also why he is a Saiyan (it's hard to explain this while remaining brief, but suffice to say, there was a longer explanation in the actual story and it made much more sense than I'm making now). Akira is, naturally, a bit confused by this revelation and wonders if this "connection" with Goku makes him less of a person and more of a puppet.

Meanwhile, upon learning that an ancient warlord known as Ammit is on his way to earth, Vegeta hatches a plan to resurrect Akira with the Namekian dragonballs. Pan, who has been in a deep depression since the tournament, decideds that she should be the one to do it and, after some debate, she sets out in one of Bulma's ships equipped with a gravity room so she can train as she travels. She also has a few random adventures, but in the end Akira is returned and the two Saiyans head back to earth.

A few weeks later, Ammit and his fighters arrive (earlier than expected) and capture Goten, who was taking a break from his training at the time. That night everyone contemplates what the next day will bring; Vegeta, in particular, reflexes on the loss of Goten and what it means to be a true warrior. In a pseudo flashback it is explained why he no longer has the ability to become a SSJ4 and he then decides that he will not rely on the brute ray to reach that level again. The following morning the remaining Z Fighters head out for battle. After a long battle, most of the aliens have been injured or killed, but only Vegeta is still able to fight. While struggling against a large group of fighters he watches as Trunks is tortured, his rage triggers a SSJ3 transformation and he quickly finishes off most of the remaining forces.

When all of the grunts are no more, a brainwashed Goten challenges the Saiyan Prince, the two fight and Vegeta nearly kills Goten, but stops when Gohan pleads for his brother's life. Vegeta agrees, but is then attacked by Goku's youngest son after he turns his back. The Saiyan Prince ends the fight permanently, but still does not kill Goten.

At this time, Akira and Pan reappear on earth (thanks to instant transmission) and help to revive their injured friends.

Vegeta begins to fight Ammit's second in command (Runihura) who is aided by the remains of Ammit's army and ultimately Vegeta is defeated. However, before the final blow can be dealt, Akira steps in and saves the prince. After quickly finishing off Runihura, Akira faces off with Ammit who proves to be far more powerful than the young man. The two battle for a long time and even after becoming a SSJ4 with the help of Vegeta's moon simulating technique, Akira is still unable to get the upper hand in the fight. But when Ammit attacks and nearly kills Pan, Akira becomes enraged and ascends to the next level, finally allowing him to defeat the evil alien, though in the end it is Krillin who deals the death blow.

The heroes return to Capsule Corp and celebrate. Bulma asks Akira to live at C.C. with her and Vegeta as his legal guardians and he accepts. Pan and Akira enjoy a moment on top of the dome and their relationship begins again. Everyone lives happily ever after...well, not quite.

**Chapter One: A Disturbing Experience**

Her feet pounded hard against the pavement as she ran along the dimly lit, empty street. The pouring rain soaked through her clothes, but it was not the cold water that chilled her, it was him.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was still chasing her, but at the moment, the distance between the two of them was increasing. The raven-haired girl rounded a corner and put on a new burst of speed. A moment later she spotted a darkened alley and, after chancing another look behind her, entered it—running straight into a rock solid body.

The force of the impact knocked her to the ground with a cry of surprise. The young woman looked around helplessly, knowing that running was out of the question and hiding was impossible. Her only chance was to attack him and pray to kami that he'd be caught off guard; it was a long shot, but it was all she had. With a surge of power she leapt to her feet and threw a hard punch at his head.

With lightening fast reflexes his hand shot up and caught her fist. He smiled sadistically as he crushed her hand with a sickening crunch. She screamed in pain.

"Now, now," the young man said with an evil chuckle, "that wasn't very nice." Then he pulled her forward by her destroyed hand and drove his knee into her stomach.

The woman fell to her knees, gasping for air and clutching the bloody lump of flesh and bone that had once been her hand; her attacker stared at her with cold ruthlessness in his eyes. His foot lashed out and sent her through the wall of a warehouse that made up part of the alley.

The dark haired woman rolled onto her stomach and gingerly pulled herself to her feet, warm, sticky blood flowed into her eyes from a long gash across her forehead. She hastily wiped the blood away with her good hand and tried to get her bearings.

"Looking for someone?" a harsh voice whispered from behind.

She spun and looked up at him wide eyed with fear. A vice-like hand clamped around her throat and lifted her off the ground effortlessly. Her one good hand struggled franticly to loosen his grip, but to no avail.

"W...why are...you doing...th...this?" she gasped. "I thought...you...lov...ed me." The already dark room was growing darker as she fought to stay conscious.

The man laughed. "Me? Love you? Hardly! You were just something for me to play with, nothing more. But now it's time to throw my toy away," he said and then dropped her onto the floor. By releasing her at that moment he'd allowed her to remain conscious, but he was not doing her a favor. He wanted her awake so she could feel helpless, betrayed, and terrified during the last moments of her life. It was the only way he could fully enjoy her death.

The young woman looked up at him, tears running down her cheeks and splashing on the dirty, blood soaked ground.

Suddenly a golden light swirled around him, chasing the shadows from the room, his face contorted into a maniacal smile.

"Please," she begged as a ball of energy formed in his palm. "Please, Akira, don't do this." The ki blast shot from his hand and nearly tore her in two; the young woman was dead before she hit the ground.

Akira looked down at her as the light surrounding his body faded and his hair became black again. His eyes seemed to twinkle as he knelt down and examined his handiwork; it had been everything he'd hoped for. "See you around Pan," he said. The Saiyan stood up, spat on the corpse, and then walked back into the shadows of the night.

"Ahhhhhh! Ouch!" Akira yelled as he smacked his head on his dorm room ceiling; even after almost an entire year he still occasionally forgot he was sleeping on the top bunk. As he lay back down in his bed, breathing heavily and rubbing his throbbing forehead, he slowly became aware that a large smile was plastered on his face. He frowned in confusion, wondering why he would be smiling after such a horrifying nightmare.

"Seriously Akira, if you're going to do _that_ at least try and be quiet about it!" Montaro, the Saiyan's roommate, called out in annoyance from the lower bed. "Or better yet, just get Pan to put out and do that stuff with her."

A ki beam shot from Akira's finger, burned a hole in his bunk, and pierced Montaro through the chest, killing him before he could make another irritating sound.

The young Saiyan shook his head and looked down at his perfectly intact bed as the sounds of his roommate's gentle snores began to once again fill the room.

'_What's going on with me?'_ he asked himself, feeling greatly disturbed by the two strange dreams. He was extremely tired, but had no desire to revisit his dream of Pan; so he propped himself up and meditated. It wasn't as restful as he would have liked, but he went the rest of the night without dreaming of killing anything.


	2. The Date

**Chapter Two: The Date**  
  
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Akira stopped in front of the large door and took a deep breath, he sincerely hoped that the four, extra strong cups of coffee he'd drank less than an hour ago were making him look at least slightly more awake than he actually felt. It had been three days since he'd awoken from a dream of killing Pan, since that time he'd slept very little because it seemed that every time he closed his eyes, his mind treated him to more dreams of committing horrific murders. The Saiyan wasn't sure why he kept having such revolting nightmares, but he suspected it was probably just due to the stress his upcoming finals were creating.  
  
{Are you going to knock or just sit there in the hall?} a voice laughed inside his head.  
  
The young man smiled. For the past three years Vegeta had been trying to help him bring out the telepathic abilities he claimed all Saiyans possessed, but no amount of effort had ever let him do more than read a mind if he was touching the person and concentrating extremely hard. It seemed that in that particular area, Akira was a very substandard Saiyan. The only exception was Pan, for some reason the two of them had been able to send thoughts to each other ever since the Tenkaichi Budoukia where they had shared their first kiss. Vegeta thought this proved that Akira had the ability to use telepathy, but wasn't working hard enough at it; Akira thought it was somewhat romantic that the only person who had access to his mind was the woman he loved, he really had no desire to let anyone else in.  
  
{We're going to be late if you don't hurry up.}  
  
Akira rolled his eyes and knocked on the door.  
  
"Hey," a tall blond girl said as the door swung open. Zori was the only person, outside of the Z Fighters, who had known Akira before his death at the Tekaichi Budoukia and still knew him now. Explaining his resurrection had been a bit tricky, especially since he and Pan had avoided the whole alien thing, but in the end she had accepted there explanation (it was hard to deny that he was standing in front of her very much alive) and had even stopped staring at him whenever he was around. "Pan's not quite ready yet and I'm folding laundry, do you want to come in or wait out here?"  
  
{'Going to be late' are we?} Akira thought towards Pan, he could almost see her grin through the walls. "I guess I'll come in, I've seen laundry before."  
  
The young man walked into the living room of the apartment that Pan's grandfather had purchased for his daughter as a going to college present. He went to sit on the couch but noticed it had a large pile of skimpy underwear on it; the young man's face became slightly pale and he suddenly became very interested in some art work on the wall.  
  
It wasn't that he found the lingerie unpleasant or even all that embarrassing, he just didn't need his mind going in that direction this early in the evening; he didn't have any actual evidence to back it up, but he'd begun to strongly suspect that Saiyan hormones were much stronger than those of humans. The past three years of officially and unofficially dating Pan had often been an enormous test of his will power, but he'd managed to survive so far without going too insane. It helped that anytime the hormones really started pumping, all he had to do was remember the little talk he and Gohan had had about his conduct towards Pan and the consequences of 'inappropriate behavior;' even after nearly two years, Akira still shuddered slightly at the memory.  
  
"So, where are you taking Pan tonight?" Zori asked as she began folding her unmentionables.  
  
"The baseball game, East Satan University is playing West Satan University for the City Cup," Akira replied, his eyes firmly planted on the painting.  
  
"A baseball game? Oh, how romantic!" the tall blond began to make a small stack of things that the Saiyan warrior really didn't want to think about. "That's the kind of date that will have Pan swooning for sure." Zori paused, thought it over for a moment, and then added, "Actually, knowing Pan, it probably will." The young woman smiled and then began to laugh.  
  
Akira joined in just as Pan entered the room.  
  
"What's so funny?" she asked.  
  
"Nothing," her two giggling friends replied in unison.  
  
Pan raised an eyebrow skeptically and looked at Akira, "Are you sure it was 'just nothing'?" There was a definite unspoken threat in her voice.  
  
The young man stopped laughing and his eyes widened slightly. "Um, we were just...uh, thinking how funny it is that everyone keeps naming things after your grandfather...you know, East Satan University, Satan City, West Satan Univer—Oh! Look at the time! We better hurry or we're going to be late!" Akira grabbed Pan's hand and hurried out the door calling out, "See you later Zori," over his shoulder as the door shut.  
  
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"So what were you two really laughing about," Pan asked as the two Saiyan's drove to the stadium.  
  
"Zori doesn't think this is much of a romantic date, but she said it would probably make you swoon," the spiky haired young man replied with a grin.  
  
"I do not swoon," Pan said with an air of annoyance.  
  
Akira stopped for a red light and then quickly leaned over and kissed her; she blushed slightly as a silly looking grin spread over her face.  
  
"Of course you don't."  
  
The streets around the stadium were packed with cars trying to get into the parking lot. So the two Saiyans had little to do, but listen to the radio while they waited for their lane to move. An interruption in the music by a new bulletin caught Pan's attention and she listened closely.  
  
"Wow, he got another one! That makes three in the last three nights."  
  
"Three what?" Akira asked.  
  
"Girls of course. There's some psycho on the loose killing twenty year old girls with dark hair. The cops are saying this guy is really twisted; they haven't found any wounds from guns or knives, so they think he's killing his victims with his bare hands and then he mutilates the corpses," Pan stared out the window at the slow moving traffic and sighed. "I went out looking for him last night, since I look like the women he's been after, but obviously I didn't get him."  
  
"Don't worry, with the daughter of the _Great Saiyaman_," Akira used a rather heroic sounding voice for the last two words and Pan couldn't keep from giggling as their lane finally began to move again. Almost twenty minutes later they had parked and gotten to their seats, only missing the opening pitch.  
  
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Akira scowled in disgust while Pan smiled smugly, nudged him in the ribs, and pointed at the scoreboard as three more runners crossed home plate. The two Saiyans were sitting at the top of the bleachers behind the backstop watching the game which was already a blow out and only in the second inning.  
  
"I should have gone out for the team," the young man said with a groan a moment later as another ball sailed over the fences and the WSU fans let out a loud cheer. "This is humiliating."  
  
"Come on now, you know that wouldn't be fair; besides, you'd get bored. Dad says even Yamcha got tired of it when he played. How fun could it be when you know you're always going to hit a homerun or throw a no-hitter?"  
  
"Yeah well, Yamcha's also in the Baseball Hall of Fame and he'd be a millionaire if he hadn't wasted all of his money," Akira replied as two ESU players collided while chasing a fly ball. Fortunately the ball landed in one of the downed player's gloves, finally ending the inning.  
  
"You _are_ a millionaire, remember? Or have you already spent all the money you won from the tournament?" Pan asked playfully.  
  
"What can I say? My other girlfriends are much higher maintenance than you." Akira received a painful punch in the arm for his joke.  
  
"If it's higher maintenance you're looking for then go get me some food, jerk!"  
  
The young man stood up and bowed gracefully, "I live but to serve, Princess."  
  
Pan started to chuckle, "Just hurry, I know you don't want to miss anymore of this game than you have to."  
  
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More than one person did a double take at the sight of Akira carrying close to two dozen hotdogs and several sodas up the bleachers. As he carefully handed Pan the food, he noticed that East Satan already had two outs with no men on base and the current batter had two strikes.  
  
The pitcher reared back and hurled the ball; the batter swung hard and, to the surprise of everyone watching, managed to make contact. The ball sailed high into the air, but clearly had no chance of escaping the infield.  
  
The young Saiyan fumbled one of the hotdogs and it fell to the ground, and then, as Pan bent down to pick it up, Akira flicked his wrist in the direction of the baseball. A huge gust of wind grabbed the ball, carried it out of the park and over a large office building in the distance.  
  
The ESU fans cheered loudly as the player rounded the bases.  
  
"That's cheating," Pan growled, glaring angrily at Akira as she sat up.  
  
The young man's face was the picture of angelic innocence, "I don't know what you're talking about I'm afraid."  
  
"You know exactly what I'm talking about, you made that ball go over the fence!"  
  
"My dearest Pan, you hurt me with these baseless accusations. I would never dream of resorting to something so childish," he looked at her with all the righteous indignation he could muster, "Don't blame me if your team needs a new pitcher."  
  
Pan continued to glare at him.  
  
Akira stared back for a moment and then a smile began to tug at the corners of his mouth. He tried to fight it, but finally had to give in and laugh. "Okay, okay, you're right, but come one, it's not like one run is going to cost you guys the win. You're still up by ten runs!"  
  
The raven haired woman's face softened slightly as she said, "Well, I guess it can't be changed now anyway, but if we lose by one run you're going to be sorry.  
  
"Fair enough," Akira said with a smile as the two Saiyans began shoveling hotdogs into their mouths.  
  
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As the late afternoon sun blazed overhead, the two Saiyans began to doze. Though Akira had not thought it possible, the game had become even more boring. ESU was now losing by nearly twenty runs and Akira was wishing college level sports had a mercy rule.  
  
Pan's head was resting on his shoulder and his tail was curled around her waist. The young woman gently ran her fingers along the fury tail which sent extremely pleasurable shivers up and down Akira's spine. It was taking every ounce of will power in his body to keep from purring.  
  
When Pan had first stroked his tail, the sensation had been overwhelming; Akira had closed his eyes and let out a long, contented purr. The young woman had immediately declared it the funniest thing she'd ever seen and from that day forward, had sought to force that reaction whenever possible. Akira, on the other hand, hated that his body responded like that, it made him feel silly; so he fought hard to remain in control whenever Pan tried to get him to make the noise. Usually it was a losing battle; today, however, luck was on his side. The combination of a full stomach, warm sun, and boring baseball quickly lulled Pan to sleep before Akira's willpower broke.  
  
Even as her breathing became slow and rhythmic and her hand slipped from his tail, the young man could feel sleep reaching out to claim him as well. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but each time he blinked his eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Finally the lack of sleep from the previous nights caught up with him, he rested his head against Pan's and drifted off to sleep.  
  
The nightmares came as soon as he closed his eyes. The intoxicating scent of blood filled his nostrils as he slaughtered all who stood before him. Most of the crowd was faceless and he killed them almost haphazardly; others, such as Vegeta, Gohan, and Pan, he recognized and they were the ones with whom he took his time. Their blood covered him and soaked into the ground as he slowly tore them limb from limb, reveling in their anguished screams.  
  
"AKIRA!"  
  
The young man opened his eyes to find Pan smacking his arm with one hand while looking down and trying to pry his tail from around her waist with the other hand.  
  
Akira grinned manically and tightened his grip on her, trying to squeeze the life from her. Suddenly realization of what he was doing struck him. His tail released her and he began apologizing profusely.  
  
"Damn," Pan said in annoyance as she massaged her bruised stomach, "where you trying to kill me or something?" She glanced up at the spiky haired Saiyan and was startled by the expression on his face.  
  
Akira had gone very pale, confusion and fear were clearly visible in his eyes, and he was almost hyperventilating. He looked like he was having some sort of panic attack.  
  
"Are you alright?" she asked as worry quickly overtook her annoyance.  
  
"Um, no... I mean, yeah, uh...I, I need to go," he dropped his keys next to her, put two fingers to his forehead, and disappeared.  
  
Pan stared at the spot that Akira had been for a moment, and then crossed her arms and scowled, "Great, first he tries to kill me, and then he ditches me without even saying goodbye! What a _wonderful _date this was."  
  
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A/N: Hey everyone, sorry this took so long to get posted. Life got kind of hectic on me all of a sudden and I just couldn't find the time to type the next chapter until just now. I really didn't like this chapter very much, but this was the best of my several attempts at it. Just a bit of warning, the first couple of chapters are going to be a little slow (at least I think they are), so bare with me as I get all of my characters where I want them so the story can unfold properly.  
  
Thanks for all of the reviews, you guys are the best! 


	3. Desperate Times

**Chapter Three: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures**

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Vegeta had just finished his dinner and was warming up for his evening training session when Akira appeared in the gravity room. A normal person, and even many of the older Z Fighters, would have been instantly crushed by the intense gravitational field inside the room, but the young Saiyan didn't appear to even notice that his body now weighed roughly thirty-four tons. Akira put his hands in his pockets and walked towards Vegeta as if he were simply out for a stroll in the park.

The Saiyan Prince raised an eyebrow as the young man approached, Akira usually only came home on weekends or occasionally in the middle of the week for a quick sparring match if he'd had a particularly frustrating day of classes; his Friday evenings were almost exclusively spent with Pan. Given that the boy looked slightly dressed up, it was obvious that he'd been with her not long before; Vegeta couldn't help but wonder why Akira was here when he could be off doing Kami-knows-what with Kakkorot's granddaughter.

"I need to talk to you," Akira said as he crossed the room. Vegeta noticed the young Saiyan looked pale and slightly off balance.

"Really? And here I thought you were gracing me with your presence just out the kindness of your heart," the Saiyan Prince sneered.

The spiky haired man ignored the comment and pressed on, "Lately I've been having dreams, violent ones, and sometimes after I wake up my brain doesn't know what's real and what's not. I...I think I almost killed my roommate a couple of days ago."

"And..." Vegeta clearly wasn't very impressed with the story so far.

"And I, uh, was wondering if that's a typical Saiyan thing..."

"Dreams are nothing more than the random firing of nerve endings in your brain, causing you to experience bits of memories which your subconscious then tries to weave into something that makes sense. They don't mean anything."

Akira looked impressed at the very un-Vegeta-like response.

The Saiyan Prince shrugged, "When you hang around Bulma as much as I do, you pick up some things." Akira began to chuckle and Vegeta glared at him, "Most warriors dream of battles at least occasionally, it's natural. Just enjoy the show."

The young man stopped laughing, "I'm not dreaming of battles, I'm dreaming of murdering people, and I _am_ enjoying it, that's the scariest part!"

Vegeta smirked, "Then maybe you need to get some of that aggression out of your system. Perhaps if you spent less time dating and more time training, your roommate wouldn't be in mortal danger as often."

Akira rolled his eyes; he should have known Vegeta's only advice would be to train more. Still, he couldn't think of any reason why the suggestion wouldn't work; and perhaps if he could just run himself into the ground he'd be too tired to dream and the nightmares would stop. He sighed and then said, "Alright, if you think it will help, I'll give it a shot."

The Saiyan Prince smiled in triumph, "Excellent. Now, go change so we can get started."

Akira responded by unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it aside followed a second later by his shoes and socks. "I hope you don't mind, but I'm ready to go now," he said as he shook out his arms and legs and then cracked his neck.

Vegeta's smile widened as he nodded and got into his fighting stance; Akira did the same and golden light erupted around the two warriors as they charged at each other.

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It was after midnight before the two sweaty and exhausted Saiyans left the gravity room.

"Goodnight," Akira said sleepily as he headed for his room, Vegeta only grunted in reply as he opened the door to the master bedroom.

Akira stripped out of his tattered jeans as soon as he entered his room and immediately headed for the shower. He emerged a few minutes later, hoped into bed and smiled, confident that he was finally going to get a peaceful night's sleep.

Less than an hour later he woke with the smell of death in his nostrils, the feeling of blood on his hands, a broad smile on his lips, and his own voice ringing in his ears: "_The Saiyan race will be extinguished by my hands!_"

Akira grabbed the trash bin next to his bed and threw up. He did not sleep the rest of the night.

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A/N: Sorry this one was kind of short, but it didn't really fit very well with the last chapter and it didn't seem to work with the next, so, uh...lucky you! A quick update! The next chapter will be my last 'setup' chapter, chapter five is when the real action will start, hang in there for me! Thanks again for all the reviews.


	4. Decisions

**Chapter Four: Decisions**

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Pan glanced at the phone, looked back at her chemistry book and then back at the phone again. She let out a long sigh.

"Are you guys sure that thing is working?" she asked.

"Yes!" her two roommates answered in unison without looking up from their own books.

Pan tried to focus on Chemistry again, but quickly gave up and devoted herself to willing the phone to ring. After five minutes of fruitless labor, she let out another sigh and opened her mouth to ask another question.

"No, you shouldn't call him," Zori answered before the Saiyan could ask the question.

"And you know he's okay because your uncle talked to Mr. Briefs yesterday," Pan's other roommate, Stacy, added.

Besides, you don't want to call him, remember? He's the one who's being a jerk, so he should call to apologize," Zori finished. The three roommates had had the same conversation several times in the past few days.

"I know, I know," Pan said glumly. It had been a week since Akira had left her at the baseball game and in all that time he hadn't called, emailed, or even stopped by to pick up his car. She'd spent the weekend fuming over how rude he'd been to just leave her in the middle of their date without so much as a goodbye, but after four days without any word, she'd grown worried enough to call Goten. Her uncle had agreed to ask Trunks if he'd seen her MIA boyfriend; of course she could have just as easily called Capsule Corp. herself, but she didn't want to seem concerned or obsessive. The next day Goten had called her back and told her Akira had been spending all of his free time training with Vegeta; which brought Pan out of her worried state and let her go back to being angry at him.

She glanced up at the clock; it was just after 3:30 in the afternoon. In another half-hour Akira would be finished with his last class of the week; after that she was giving him one hour to call her before she hunted him down.

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Akira blinked tiredly as he stared at his practice test and then looked up at the clock. He was almost free.

Calculus was usually pretty boring, but when added to almost no sleep for an entire week it was practically unbearable.

"Ten minutes left," the professor called out.

The Saiyan looked back down at his test, he was only on problem five and his answer for number three was a doodle of him stabbing the teacher with his pencil...or maybe it was a sword, he wasn't much of an artist.

He began adding improvements to the picture until the old man called out, "Time."

Akira looked up in annoyance and a vision of killing his teacher flashed in front of his eyes. The young man smiled, it would be so easy and with his speed he could be back in his seat before anyone even noticed he'd moved. His muscles twitched and for a second he actually considered doing it, but then he awoke from his daydream, packed his things and headed out the door. He hurried to the nearest bathroom, checked that he was alone, and then used Instant Transmission to get himself to the Capsule Corp. gravity room where Vegeta was waiting impatiently.

"Took you long enough," the Saiyan Prince said in a gruff voice as the young man suddenly appeared.

Akira glared at Vegeta through tired eyes, but said nothing as he stretched. After a few minutes of silence, Vegeta walked to the gravity machine controls, set the gravity to 600G and faced the younger fighter.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

Akira nodded and waited for Vegeta to power up. Golden light exploded around the Saiyan Prince, his eyebrows receded and his hair grew past his waist. The young man raised an eyebrow as he felt the Super Saiyan's power level, Vegeta was much more powerful than he'd been when they had fought Ammit's army. Akira's golden aura swirled around him as he also went to level three, matching the older Saiyan's power level exactly. The two stared at each other for a moment and then vanished as their sparring session began.

The two warriors fought for several hours. Vegeta spent most of that time easily dodging Akira's sloppy attacks and then pummeling the young man mercilessly; the rest of the time was spent mocking the sleep deprived warrior. Akira tried blocking out the Saiyan Prince's taunts and focusing on protecting himself from the relentless attacks, but in his exhausted state he was no match for the older Saiyan.

"What's the matter boy? Too tired to keep up?" Vegeta asked as he delivered a powerful uppercut to Akira's face. The young man was dazed by the attack and Vegeta used the opportunity to grab him by the arm and throw him to the ground.

Akira crashed face first into the hard metal floor and lay very still; Vegeta floated in the air just above him, his arms crossed and a triumphant smirk on his face. After several minutes, the young man groaned, rolled onto his back and sat up; blood was running from his nose and mouth and his eyes were clouded with anger.

"How was your nap?" the Saiyan Prince asked mockingly, "I hope you didn't have any bad dreams!"

"Shut up," Akira growled threateningly.

Vegeta ignored him, "I though when you said you wanted to train that I'd be getting a decent work out, but all I'm doing is building up the calluses on my knuckles." The Saiyan's smirk became a sneer, "You're pathetic."

Akira was on his feet in an instant, blood pounding in his ears. He stared up at Vegeta, trying to calm the irrational hatred coursing through his veins and block out the taunts, but he couldn't do it. Every word that spilled from the cocky prince's lips echoed loudly in the young man's ears.

"Maybe you should go cry to Pan about your nightmares, I'm sure she'll be much more sympathetic than I," Vegeta threw his head back and laughed heartily. Suddenly his laughter died on his lips, he looked down and found that Akira had vanished. The Saiyan's eyes narrowed, as near as he could sense, the young man was no longer in the building, or even on the planet; which meant he was still in the room but was using his ki barrier to hide his power level.

Of all the tricks in Akira's bag, his energy masking technique was the one Vegeta envied the most. To be able to completely hid your ki, even when powered up to your max, would give you an incredible advantage over an enemy.

He never saw the blow coming. One moment he was hunting for any sign of the young fighter and the next he was pulling himself out of a hole in the wall.

'_Well,'_ Vegeta thought with a painful grin, _'at least he's finally fighting back. I didn't think I could have put up with codling him much longer.'_

Another unseen blow struck him, this time in the stomach; as Vegeta doubled over and coughed up blood, he began to think he might have taken the taunts to far.

Akira appeared in front of the downed warrior, his face filled with cold fury. "What's wrong, _my Prince_? No taunts? No laughter?" The young man's fist lashed out and slammed into Vegeta's face after each question and then continued to pound him when he had nothing else to say, opening up large gashes on the older man's face.

Finally, Akira grabbed the prince by his long golden hair, swung him around several times, and then threw him into the opposite wall of the room. Vegeta slumped to the ground as his hair shortened and became black again, blood dripped from his wounds and began to form a puddle under him.

'_Kill him!'_ a voice screamed into Akira's head as he stood over the Saiyan Prince. _'Kill him now!'_

The young man brought his hand up and pointed it at Vegeta; it began to glow as energy gathered in his palm. A second passed...and then another... and another.

'_Do it,'_ the voice screamed louder as Akira's hand began to shake. _'Finish him and the nightmares will stop.'_

The Super Saiyan closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and then let it out slowly.

"No," he whispered as his eyes opened, the ball of ki in his hand dissipated and he powered down. He quickly scooped up the unconscious warrior and hurried to the rejuvenation tank room.

Within a few minutes, Vegeta was gently bobbing up and down in the healing fluids while Akira watched in silence, his mind awash in a sea of chaos and confusion.

He was so lost in thought he didn't notice the other presence in the room until a cool hand gently touched his shoulder.

"Tough day of training?" Bulma asked softly as she looked at the rejuvenation tank.

Something like that," Akira responded cryptically without taking his eyes off of Vegeta.

The aqua haired scientist smiled and then looked up at him, her smile faltered. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how exhausted he was; and there was something else, something in his eyes just looked...off. She could see confusion, worry, and even fear reflecting out of his dark eyes. Bulma couldn't remember ever seeing Akira look the way he did now.

"Are you okay?" she asked, not bothering to suppress the concern in her voice.

The young man's jaw flexed noticeably and he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "I'm fine," he said stiffly.

Bulma had gotten to know Akira quite well in the few years that he had been living in her home. He was many things, but a good liar was not one of them and this was no exception.

"Come on," she said as she led him from the room, "I'll make you some coffee and we'll talk; we haven't done that in a long time."

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Five minutes later, despite his many protests, Akira found himself sitting on the couch in one of the living rooms, drinking from a large, steaming mug and trying not to look Bulma in the eyes.

"So, are you going to tell me what's wrong or just stare at your coffee all day?"

'_Well Bulma, I just about murdered your husband a few minutes ago because a voice in my head told me to. Don't worry though, I think the whole hearing voices thing is mostly just a byproduct of not sleeping, but unfortunately when I do sleep I dream about killing all of my friends, including you and the woman I supposedly love. So, do you want to call the nut house or should I?'_ Akira almost smiled at the thought. It might have been worth saying it aloud just to see Bulma's reaction; almost, but not quite. Instead he took another sip of his drink and said, "I'm fine, I just haven't been sleeping well lately."

"Finals making you nervous?" the scientist probed from her comfortable chair.

"Maybe...I don't know. I haven't felt too stressed about them, but I guess it could be bothering me subconsciously," the young man lied.

"Hmmm," Bulma took a drink from her own mug. She could tell he was lying, but she knew from past experience that pressing a Saiyan for information on a subject they didn't want to talk about was generally pointless, so she played along. "Yeah that might be it. I used to get pretty stressed out right before finals when I was your age." She stared up at the ceiling, enjoying the memories of her youth for a moment, and then she casually asked, "By the way, how's Pan? I haven't seen her in a while."

Akira choked on his coffee. "Uh, she's fine, of course, why do you ask?" he finally managed to get out between painful coughing fits.

"Just curious," Bulma said, again kindly letting another obviously uncomfortable subject drop. An awkward silence settled over the room for a few minutes until the aqua haired woman asked, "Do you want to see what I've been working on lately?"

"Sure," Akira replied with a relieved smile.

Bulma stood and led him down the hall to her lab, she flipped on her computer and waited while it booted up. As they waited, Akira glanced curiously at the large pile of blue prints covering her desk; the one on top immediately grabbed his attention.

"Hey, isn't this..."

"Ammit's ship? It sure is. I'm really glad you guys didn't destroy it during your fight; you wouldn't believe how many patents we've gotten from ideas based on its technology. The engine alone must have gotten us twenty, it's just incredible." The computer beeped and they both looked at the screen while Bulma slowly cycled through the info.

Most of it was complex formulas and theories that looked like gibberish to Akira; but, so near as he could tell; he was looking at plans for some sort of advanced spaceship, something that combined Capsule Corp. technology with that of Ammit's ship. A brief description of the engines flashed onto the screen, Akira read it and then glanced at Bulma.

"It's a time machine?" he asked skeptically.

"Cool, huh?" the scientist looked ready to burst with pride.

"Does it work?"

"I don't know. It hasn't been tested yet, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't," Bulma brought up another screen full of numbers and strange symbols, "all of my calculations work out."

Akira looked at the screen and smiled, "I'll take your word on that." He was quiet for a moment before saying, "So, I take it this isn't an invention you're telling a lot of people about."

"Nah, I don't think I'd want it getting around that we have this kind of technology, people probably wouldn't appreciate it the way I do."

"Then why build it?"

"Mostly just to prove to myself what I genius I am...and a tiny part of me wanted to make sure I was as smart as the Bulma from Mirai Trunks' timeline."

Akira smiled and for a moment the exhaustion in his eyes faded slightly, "I think you can rest assured that you are one of, if not _the_, most intelligent person in this or any other timeline." Then, his eyes focused on the clock on the wall and grew wide, "Shit! Is it already 7:00? I'm missing a study session!"

As he started to run out of the room, Bulma called after him, "Don't forget, we're having dinner with Trunks and Icalla on Tuesday."

He stopped his mad dash and turned, "I wouldn't dream of missing a meal with the future Mrs. Trunks Briefs."

"Good. Bring a date."

There was a moment of hesitation before Akira said, "We'll see." And then he was gone.

Bulma smiled and shook her head before heading to the rejuvenation room to check on her husband.

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When the hour Pan had given Akira to call her came and went she'd planned on going to find him right away. However, when she sensed him training with Vegeta she'd decided to wait until he was done, but then his ki had vanished and she was left searching for him without a clue as to where he had gone.

After over an hour of searching, she gave up and headed to his dorm room to wait for him there.

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Akira had flown at top speed to the East Satan University Library, but he'd still missed the first half of the study session. Not that it had mattered, he spent his entire time in the library staring at a blank sheet of paper, lost in thought and tuning out all of his study partners.

His mind eventually wandered to his treatment of Pan during the last week; he really wasn't being fair to her. She deserved better, she deserved someone that would be there for her, someone who didn't avoid her...someone who didn't dream of murdering her every time he fell asleep.

It wasn't until he'd begun his walk back to the dorms that it hit him. Despite his feelings for her, he had to break up with Pan. It couldn't be a little break up either, he had to make sure that she would never want to see him again, so she could get on with her life...and then he had to leave and never return, or at least stay away until he regained some semblance of mental health.

'_How could I do this? How can I even think of intentionally hurting her enough to make her hate me?'_ he asked himself and then a picture of her mutilated corpse flashed before his eyes. If he broke her heart, he would hate himself, but if he did nothing and his dreams came true... _'No, I won't ever let that happen! I'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.'_

And that was when he noticed that Pan was already very close. Akira scanned the area and quickly realized that she was waiting for him near his room. He sighed; he wasn't ready for this, not yet. He needed time to figure out what he was going to say, what he was going to do, and most importantly he needed to rest.

He looked around to make sure no one was paying any attention to him and then shot into the air faster than the human eye could follow. It took only a few minutes to reach the woods that had been his home when he had first met Pan back in high school. Perhaps if he slept here, where no one could be hurt if he woke up in the mood to kill, maybe he could get a few hours of sleep. He found a small grove with soft grass and lay down, a moment later he was asleep.

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Pan was about to give up and go home when she felt an enormous power surge that could only be Akira. She immediately ran to the nearest door and leapt into the sky, it wasn't hard to tell where he was, there was a large golden glow coming from a distant part of the forest. She put on an extra burst of speed and within a couple of minutes she arrived in Akira's grove.

The sight that greeted her chilled her to her bones. Akira stood before her, covered in golden fur that was drenched in the blood of what looked like it had once been a deer, the creature's corpse was so mangled that it was impossible to tell for sure. The powerful warrior's metallic blue eyes locked on her and he sneered menacingly.

Pan took a hesitant step back. "Akira? Are y...wha, what's wrong?"

Every instinct in her body told her to run; she could see the blood lust in his eyes, but she refused to leave him. Taking a deep breath and summoning up all of her courage, she walked towards the man she loved. As she drew closer to him, he suddenly looked confused as if he were being pulled in two different directions. He put his hands to his ears and shook his head, fighting whatever demons were harassing him, and then his whole body sagged. He powered down and fell to his knees.

Pan knelt beside him and put her arm around him, "What's wrong Akira, what's happening to you?"

Akira had no answers; he could only stare at the bloody pile of flesh that had been a deer that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. For the first time in his short life, he had killed for a reason other than food or to protect his friends. He'd killed the animal for the simple pleasure of it all, he'd mutilated the corpse for fun, and he'd enjoyed every second of it. And deep down he could feel a small, but growing, part of himself that wanted to do it again.

.

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A/N: Alright, this chapter was kind of long, but at least there was a bit of action, right? From here on out things should start picking up a bit...hopefully.


	5. A Love Destroyed

**Chapter Five: A Love Destroyed**

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Akira stared at the ceiling and listened to Pan's breathing. When he was sure she was asleep, he rolled out of bed, pulled his shirt on, wrote her a quick note, and jumped out of her bedroom window, landing softly after a four story drop.

As he walked down the dark street he looked back at the open window and sighed. Just a little over a week ago he would have given anything to get the chance to spend the night cuddled up next to Pan, her scent filling his nostrils, his arms wrapped around her; but after what happened in the woods, he knew he'd wake up next to a corpse with her blood on his hands.

Thinking about the woods made him shudder. He prayed Pan didn't know how close he'd been to killing her, how loudly the voice had been screaming for him to slay the 'half-breed.' It had taken everything he had to stay his hand and save her life. Those few seconds had cemented his resolve to end his relationship with her and flee the city, before he did something horrible.

Even as he walked, he could feel his eyelids growing heavier and something sinister clawing at the back of his mind. He put on a new burst of speed, hoping the effort would keep him awake.

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Pan's eyelashes fluttered open as the first rays of sunlight filtered in through her window, she smiled as she caught a whiff of Akira's scent on the pillow next to her. It took a moment before she realized that his scent was the only part of Akira still in the room; she looked around in confusion and spotted the folded piece of paper on her bed-side table. She grabbed it and read:

_Pan,_

_Sorry I wasn't there when you woke up, but I didn't think it was a good idea for me to spend the night with you (your dad would kill me). I also want to apologize for last night, I've been going through some things that are kind of hard to explain, but I'm think I'm getting it straightened out. I hope I didn't scare you too much. I'm going to be pretty busy studying for finals during the next few days (as I'm sure you will be too), but let's get together for a late lunch on Tuesday. I'll meet you at Jimmy's Diner at 2:30. If that doesn't work for you give me a call._

_Akira_

"Akira? Just Akira? No 'love' or 'yours always?'" Pan asked the note, which predictably had no response for her. She took a deep breath and tried to relax, there was no reason to read more into the lack of a couple words other than that he was in a hurry. Yes, that made sense and he had asked for a date on Tuesday, that was definitely a step in the right direction.

'_We'll see each other Tuesday and work everything out, and then after next week we won't have finals to worry about for a long time so we can spend some real time together,'_ she smiled to herself and got ready for another exciting day of studying.

A few minutes later, after visiting the kitchen and fixing her self a heaping bowl of cereal, she walked into the living room where Stacy was watching the morning news.

"Good morning," the red head said cheerfully.

"Hey," Pan said as she sat down and began shoveling the cereal into her mouth. She had met Stacy during her senior year of high school thanks to Zori. Zori and Stacy had nearly identical personalities so it was fairly easy to get along with them, though it sometimes scared Pan that there were two people like that in the world.

"Wow!" Stacy exclaimed as she turned up the TV so she could hear it better.

Pan looked up as a female reporter said, "—lowing footage was shot just this morning at the crime scene, if there are any children in the room they should leave now as this contains graphic and disturbing images." What followed was indeed graphic; in fact, it made Pan's stomach churn to watch it. The video was of a bloody alleyway where the corpse of a woman had been tied in a knot around a light pole. According to the report, the woman had been stabbed several times by a large knife or sword. The police hadn't been able to ID the body yet, but she clearly had dark hair and might have been in her early to mid twenties.

"What kind of sick bastard would do something like that?" Zori asked as she entered the room. No one bothered to answer her.

"Police still don't have a suspect, but they believe that the serial killer known as 'The Butcher' may have switched to a new method of killing his victims," the reporter continued. "Police are urging everyone, but particularly young woman with dark hair to stay indoors after dark. We'll have more on this story as it develops, back to..."

Pan tuned out the rest of the report, she would have to start spending her evening walking around town and hoping this maniac came after her before he killed anymore people; hopefully with all the other dark haired, young women staying inside, she'd have better luck finding him.

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After three fruitless nights of walking around hoping to be attacked, Pan was in a foul mood when she woke up on Tuesday morning; and the torrential downpour of rain did little to raise her spirits. Still, in just a few hours she would be seeing Akira; that was about all the ugly gray day seemed to have going for it.

Fortunately, she didn't have a difficult final to deal with, her weightlifting class was a joke, but she took it because Zori and Stacy begged her to. They'd said it would be fun and that they needed someone who was willing to goof off with them. So, after several days of being pestered, she finally gave in and signed up for the class, figuring she needed a couple of extracurricular credits anyway.

The final went by painlessly enough; Pan could have easily lifted with one finger the weight she was required to bench-press, but she put on a good show of struggling with it and the teacher seemed satisfied with her work.

When all three roommates where finished with their exam, they ran home through the pouring rain and helped Pan get ready for her big date.

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Akira was also getting ready for the 'date, though he was far from excited about it. As soon as his physics final (which he was pretty sure he'd bombed) was finished, he'd raced to the nearest Starbucks and guzzled what amounted to about a half-gallon of espresso. After that he'd gone back to his dorm and sat in front of the TV, twitching with artificial energy.

At 1:45 he headed out. He'd originally planned on flying there, but with the rain coming down so hard it seemed fitting for him to walk through it, a pseudo-penance for the crime he was about to commit.

As he neared the dinner, he passed by a darkened alley. For a moment, he thought he saw something in the shadows peering out at him, but upon closer inspection, it turned out to be nothing more than his tired eyes playing tricks on him.

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Pan smiled as soon as Akira walked through the door. The young man was soaked, his shirt clung tightly to his body, showing off his well defined muscles, and his usually spiky hair hung down in his eyes; all in all, not a bad look for him.

'_Not bad at all,'_ the demi-saiyan thought as her eyes traveled over his body.

"You're late," she said as he sat down, "did you forget how to fly?"

"No, I just...wanted to walk."

"Well, do you want something specific or shall we just order one of everything like we usually do?" Pan asked as she took a look at the menu.

"I'm not hungry," Akira said quietly.

Pan immediately knew something was wrong. Akira was always hungry, he could pack away more food than anyone she knew and, given her family and friends, that was saying something.

"Well then, what do you want to talk about?"

"I...I've been doing some thinking lately and, well, I...uh, I just think...that we should..." he swallowed hard and then quickly said, "I don't think that we should see each other any more."

Pan's heart dropped into her shoes, "What do you mean?" she asked dumbly, not wanting to believe that she had heard him correctly.

Akira took a deep breath and said, "I don't want to date you anymore Pan, things just aren't the way they were before. I'm different, your different, we're just not right for each other."

Pan felt like she'd been slapped in the face and, for what seemed like an eternity, she could only stare at him in shock. Finally she asked in a quiet voice, "Is there someone else?"

Akira's first instinct was to tell her how stupid that question was, that there could never, and probably would never, be anyone else, but then he realized that it was the perfect way to hurt her.

"Yes," he said, knowing he couldn't look her in the eyes while he lied without giving away his true feelings, "I've been seeing her off and on since college started and well she..." it broke his heart to do this, but he knew it was for the best, "she puts out and you don't. I mean, I'm a man; I have certain needs and you just don't satisfy them."

Pan was in tears; when Akira had walked through the door her heart had soared with joy, but now, it was shattered, destroyed by the one man she'd ever dared to love. His betrayal was so thorough, so intentional; it made her sick to her stomach.

"Do you love me at all anymore?" she managed to choke out after a moment of silence.

"No," he answered coldly. He'd known the question was coming and he knew his answer had to be firm, absolute. There couldn't be even the slightest hesitation to give her any sort of hope.

"Well, I guess I'll see you around then," Pan said fiercely; Akira's cold, heartless answer had roused her from her despair and given her fuel for the rage that now burned within her broken heart.

"Not likely. My 'friend' and I are getting out of this dump. We're going to go find some romantic little place and spend a few months catching some rays and screwing all night."

Pan rose from her chair and looked at him in disgust; she didn't know what had happened, but he was no longer the man she'd fallen in love with...maybe he never was. "Well, have a nice life. I know I won't miss you." She turned, walked to the door, and tore it off its hinges as she walked out.

Akira felt her power up and fly away. Only then did he let the tears that he'd fought so hard against to fall. He'd destroyed the person that he held most dear, sure he'd done it for her own good, but that hardly made him feel better.

The Saiyan checked his watch, it was only 2:45; it had taken less than ten minutes to ruin the relationship he treasured most in all the world. On top of that, he still had over three hours before he had to be at Capsule Corp.

'_Well, might as well head back to the dorms and get some clean nice clothes,'_ he thought.

He walked to the front counter, gave what he hoped was enough zeni to pay for the broken door to a very confused waitress, and then headed out into the rain. After what he'd just done he figured he deserved another trip through the freezing rain before he ate a nice dinner with a bunch of people he dreamed of killing.

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A/N: There was going to be a whole other part to this chapter, but after writing the break-up scene, I decided to make the second part its own chapter. I know I'd said there was going to be action in this chapter, but I figured Akira ripping out Pan's heart was kind of like action.

A/N: By the way, how was that for a break up scene? I was never very good at breaking up with girls myself and I didn't think Akira had time to use the meaner (but longer) 'try to get her to break up with me" technique. Anyway, please review and let me know.

Rejhan: Sorry, but Akira was sort of stuck between breaking up with her or killing her, one or the other...though maybe in the end he'll just do both.

Donkeykong27: I actually haven't decided if that was foreshadowing or not, mostly I just thought it was something cool for Bulma to build and talk to Akira about (the guy seriously needed to get his mind off his own troubles for a while).

Toni the Mink: Cool, let me know when you get done, I'd love to see it.

Draco the Destroyer: Of course I remember you, how could I forget? You were one of my most loyal reviewers for the first story; I hope you're enjoying this one as well.


	6. The Unthinkable

**Chapter Six: The Unthinkable**

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By the time Akira got back to the dorm there were already two long, expletive-filled messages waiting for him on his voicemail. They were from Pan's roommates and said essentially the same thing: Pan was at home crying and he was the lowest form of scum. Old news, he already knew those things.

It took a concentrated effort not to use Instant Transmission to go see Pan, pick her up in his arms, tell her he'd lied trying to get her a safe distance from him, and do everything in his power to comfort her.

'_Not that she's likely to believe me anymore,' _he thought,_ 'but I guess that's what I was going for; so mission accomplished.' _Somehow that didn't make him feel any better

The Saiyan sighed as he packed a duffle bag with dirty clothes to take to Capsule Corp. and tried to convince himself that what he'd done had been for the best. When all of his dirty clothes had been removed from the corner of the room he'd been dropping them in; Akira got into the shower and let the warm water soothe his tired body as he did his best to forget the horrible pain he'd just inflicted on the person he'd promised himself he would always protect. He hadn't forgotten what had happened when he'd fought Ammit, the thin scar on Pan's stomach served as a constant reminder of his nearly disastrous failure that day.

His mind and body felt so weary; the energy boost he'd gained from the unhealthy amounts of espresso he'd drank had worn off and left him more exhausted than he'd been before, if such a thing were possible. Within a few minutes he found himself sitting in the tub as the water continued to splash down on him. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten there, but didn't really care as his eyes began to grow heavy; a moment later he was asleep.

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Bulma was busy chopping vegetables when she heard the back door open. She set down her knife and took a peak around the corner, wondering who had braved the storm to visit her.

"Hey, you're pretty early," she said to the young man who had just put down a large duffle bag. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, you're never late when there's free food to be had."

The spiky haired youth flashed a large smile in response.

Bulma looked at him for a moment; he seemed different somehow, more at peace than he had when she'd seen him last.

'_He must be sleeping better,'_ she thought happily.

So, did you come early to spend time with me," her eyes locked onto the bulging bag, "or just to wash your clothes?" The young man's smile widened slightly and Bulma couldn't help but chuckle at how predictable he was.

"Well, you know where the laundry room is. Have fun." The aqua haired scientist headed back into the kitchen and checked her cookbook for the next step in the recipe. She had just found her spot when she felt something on her neck; she turned and jumped in surprise.

"Oh Kami, you scared the crap out of me!" she said to the young man who was standing entirely too close for comfort. "Um, I don't know what they've been teaching you at college, but there is still such a thing as personal spa—." Her words were cut off by the sharp pain that shot through her.

Bulma looked down in surprise at the knife handle protruding from her stomach. Her mind seemed stuck in slow motion until a dark, crimson stain began to spread over her white apron.

She looked up at the smirking man, whose eyes had become cold and cruel.

"Why?" she asked as she fell back against the counter, tipping over several bowls that she'd been preparing. She started to fall, but a powerful hand clamped onto her throat and kept her from hitting to the ground.

"Call for him," the young man growled, "Call for Vegeta." He pulled the knife from her gut with one quick jerk and more blood began to bubble up from the wound.

"No," she said firmly.

Her attacker floated a few feet into the air, dragging her with him, and then slammed her head into the ceiling. The scientist nearly passed out from the pain as her forehead was split open by the impact.

"Do it!" the young man screamed and then tossed her in the direction of the gravity rooms.

Bulma landed hard and lay on ground panting for breath; blood was rushing out of her body and forming a small puddle beneath her. Finally, she began to use the wall to pull herself to her feet, leaving a series of smeared hand prints on her way up.

She had to get to her husband to warn him what was happening; perhaps if she could do that, he would be able to escape the crazed boy. She staggered towards the hall, trying to call for the Saiyan Prince.

"Ve...g...eta," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. Every breath felt like fire, blood was running down her face and stinging her eyes, every step was agony, but she knew if she didn't get to the Saiyan Prince soon she'd collapse and bleed to death.

Just as her strength seemed to be giving out, she heard him calling to her from the gravity room.

"Woman! How much longer before !" she gasped.

The Saiyan Prince stepped into the hallway, his eyes immediately took in the situation, but his mind couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. "What happened?" he demanded.

Bulma started to respond, but before she could, the figure behind her flicked his wrist and sent her vegetable knife speeding down the hall.

The knife hit her right between her shoulder blades, severing her spine, and then exploded out of her chest in a shower of gore as it raced towards Vegeta. The Saiyan instinctively swatted the blade away and then watched in horror as his wife fell face first to the ground, a river of blood flowing out of her.

Vegeta stared at Bulma's body and then at her murderer. "H...wha...why?" he stammered, still reeling from what had just happened.

The young man smiled evilly. "Don't worry, my prince, you'll be joining your whore in hell soon enough," he said as golden light erupted around him.

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A/N: I know this was kind of short, but I think you can see why it needed to be separated from the last chapter. Well, let me know what you think.


	7. Only the Beginning

**Chapter Seven: Only the Beginning**

As brilliant gold light swirled around the young man, Vegeta's mind slowly awoke to the reality of the situation.

Bulma was gone and her murderer was planning on making him next.

The Saiyan Prince looked down at the limp body of his fallen wife and rage boiled inside of him. Golden lightening swirled around him as he forced himself to burn the picture of Bulma laying in a puddle of blood into his mind. With a loud scream a column of blinding light shot up around him and ripped through the roof.

The young man watched with an expression of mild amusement as Vegeta powered up to Super Saiyan Three.

When the light faded, the younger fighter's smile grew, "You know you can't beat me, don't you? You're nothing compared to my power."

"That may be," the prince responded coldly, "but you should have learned long ago that power doesn't always win the fight." Without warning he shot forward and landed a powerful punch to the other warrior.

The young man smashed through the wall and landed in the tall office building across the street. Vegeta flew through the exit made by the traitor and landed in the grass in front of Capsule Corp, waiting patiently for his enemy to make the next move.

Suddenly, the rubble on the bottom floor of the office building shifted then golden light shot out of it as the young man powered up and blew the concrete and glass away from him. He climbed to his feet and then calmly walked towards Vegeta.

"Whoa, are you alright buddy?" a business man in an expensive suit asked as the golden warrior passed him.

The young man looked at him and smiled evilly; he casually pointed a glowing finger at the confused man and sent a ki beam through his chest. The poor human slammed into a wall and then crumpled to the ground as blood gushed from his wound.

The golden warrior chuckled as he observed his handiwork and then continued on his way to face Vegeta.

"Is this _really_ necessary?" Trunks asked as Icalla half-led, half-dragged him into another wine store (their fifth stop in less than an hour). This one had a sign in front that claimed it had the best selection in all of Satan City; of course the last four had all had similar signs.

"Come on, you know I want tonight to be perfect," the curly haired brunette responded. "This is the first time we've had a real dinner with your parents, Akira, and Bra all at the same time since we got engaged and with Akira and Bra's school and social schedules, we might not get another chance like this for a long time."

The purple haired Saiyan sighed, "Alright, alright, but this is the last place where going to. If they don't have what you're looking for, we're just getting the next best thing, deal?"

Icalla rolled her eyes, but smiled, "How can the son of the richest woman in the world have so little appreciation for the finer things in life?"

Trunks shrugged, "What can I say? I'm Vegeta's s—." His sentence died on his lips as he felt an enormous power up from his father in West Capital, the Saiyan Prince had just gone straight to full power.

"Trunks? What's wrong?" Icalla asked in confusion as she watched her future husband's face fill with concern.

It took the demi-Saiyan a moment to get over his shock at the sudden power up; there was no other ki signature in the area, so obviously Vegeta was just trying to take his training to a new level of extreme. Trunks smiled and let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"It's okay, dad's just training again. I'm sure mom will be kicking him out of the gravity room in a few minutes, so he can get ready for dinner."

The two golden fighters stood on opposite sides of the street and glared at each other. The rain was still coming down hard, but both were so focused on their enemy that they didn't even notice it.

They charged at each other at the exact same time, meeting in the middle of the street. Vegeta threw a hard right hook, but the young man caught it and fired his own right hand punch which the Saiyan Prince latched onto as well. In an instant, two fighters of unimaginable power were standing in the center of West Capital pushing against each other in a standoff. Their auras pulsated against each other as the street began to crumble beneath them.

After a moment of struggle, the younger warrior reared back and head-butted Vegeta in the face; the older fighter staggered for a moment, but then he retaliated in kind and was pleased to feel the young man's nose crack against his forehead.

His advantage was short lived though as the other Saiyan brought his knee up into Vegeta's stomach, forcing the Saiyan Prince to bend over. A moment later, Vegeta was sent flying out of the deep crater as the young man pulled his hands free and hit the older Saiyan with a vicious uppercut. Vegeta crashed through the outer wall of Capsule Corp. and through several other walls inside the building before finally coming to a stop.

The Saiyan Prince lay dazed for a few seconds, but eventually he climbed painfully to his feet and began charging an attack as he flew through the holes he had created and out into the rain. The young man was strolling towards him almost lazily, a happy smile upon his face.

Vegeta threw his arm forward and launched his ki attack as he screamed, "Garlic Gun!"

The huge ki wave slammed into the younger fighter and sent him flying through several buildings before a huge explosion rocked the city.

A three hundred zeni bottle of wine fell from Trunks hand and shattered against the floor as his head whipped around when he felt the enormous ki attack.

'_Dad would never use something that powerful in his training,' _the lavender haired Saiyan thought as he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the battle. As far as he could sense, his father was completely alone; which meant either his father had started attacking the city or he was fighting an enemy whose power couldn't be felt, like Ammit or Android 18. Neither prospect was very comforting.

As he continued to try to figure out what was happening in West Capital, Trunks gradually became aware of something tapping him on the shoulder.

"...Sir, sir, I hope you're going to be able to pay for that bottle sir, that was our most expensive wine!" a slightly overweight, older woman said in a shrill voice.

Trunks ignored the clerk and pulled out his cell phone.

"Sir, did you hear me? You have to pay for that!"

He dialed the number for Capsule Corp, but only received a message from the phone company saying that the lines to that part of the city were temporarily out of service.

"Sir, if you can't pay for that bot—"

Trunks rounded suddenly on the clerk and his eyes flashed dangerously as he glared at the annoying woman; she wisely shut up and took a large step back.

"Here, put the bottle on this, plus anything else the lady wants," he said, handing the confused woman his credit card. Then, turning to Icalla, he smiled apologetically and said, "I think something's up with dad and the phone lines are down. Do you mind finding the wine on your own? I promise I'll be back to pick you up in time for dinner...hopefully."

His fiancé smiled her beautiful smile and nodded. "Alright, if you're that desperate to get out of shopping, I'll let you off the hook," she said with a wink that told him she was teasing. "Just give me the keys and I'll meet you back at my place."

Trunks quickly handed over the keys, kissed her on the cheek, and then rushed out of the store; with a brilliant flash of golden light he shot into the air and was gone.

The demi-Saiyan was only a few miles outside of town when he felt Gohan, Goten, and Pan not far behind him.

'_Whatever you're up against father, just hang on. Reinforcements are on the way.'_

All of the muscles in Vegeta's body were tense and ready as his eyes flashed back and forth; searching for the enemy he knew was out there.

"Boo!" a voice whispered behind him as a finger flicked one of his ears.

The Saiyan Prince turned and fired a ki blast that blew the top of the Capsule Corp. dome off, but the owner of the voice had already moved.

"Nice shot."

Vegeta whirled around and found the young man leaning against the remains of one of the office buildings that had been destroyed.

"Bulma would be pretty pissed about that," the golden warrior said mockingly, "well, you know...if I hadn't killed her already."

Vegeta roared in rage and shot forward as the young fighter did the same. The two super powers collided with such force that all of the windows on the buildings in the surrounding area shattered. For a moment, the two fighters simply traded blows in the middle of the street and then they vanished as their battle was taken to the air at unimaginable speeds.

During the next fifteen minutes the fight between the two warriors was impossible to see; only the occasional explosion from a ki blast or the collapsing of a building one of the fighters had been knocked into revealed that something was amiss in the usually peaceful city. The apparent randomness of the devastation also served to keep the police, reporters, and photographers from locating the source of the destruction as they raced from one disaster to another.

Finally the two fighters reappeared not far from the partially destroyed Capsule Corp building; they glared at each other through the rain as they tried to recover their breath. Both warriors were bleeding heavily from numerous wounds; their clothes completely in tatters, but neither seemed to notice or care.

"You're stronger than I thought you would be," the young man said as his breathing began to return to normal.

"Then you're even dumber than you look," Vegeta spat, "we've been training together for the past three years; you should know everything about my abilities by now."

"If that's what you want to believe, but then those three years of training that_ we_ did together don't seem to be helping you either."

The Saiyan Prince scowled, "You've been using a different fighting style; it's taken me awhile to adjust to it."

"What can I say? The Saiyan fighting style is so sloppy and brutish; I couldn't stand to use i—" the young man stopped mid-sentence and both he and Vegeta glanced to the east. Four good sized power levels were quickly approaching.

"Well, I'd say you've got less than twenty minutes before our friends get here and everyone knows what you really are," the Saiyan Prince said.

"I don't think it's quite time for them to realize what their up against, I'm not finished having my fun," the young warrior smirked. "Besides, it won't take me half that time to finish you."

A bright aura swirled around him as red fur sprouted and quickly covered his arms and back while his golden hair became black and his aqua eyes turned yellow.

Vegeta knew the fight was hopeless now; he'd known from the beginning, but the Super Saiyan 4 transformation had made it official. As a powerful fist slammed into his face, throwing him through a distant tower, he prayed that he'd be able to make the fight last long enough for the others to arrive. They might not stand a chance against their powerful enemy, but at least they would be able to see the attacks coming.

The Saiyan Prince shook the cobwebs from his mind and looked up just in time to see the building that he'd passed through begin to crumble and collapse down on him. Vegeta pushed more power into his aching muscles and shot to the side, barely escaping the avalanche of cement and glass. A second later another fist hit him on top of the head and drove him into the ground like a nail.

"Now," the younger warrior said as he knelt next to the hole Vegeta's head was sticking out of, "the question is: should I kill you now and save your son the chore of finding two grave sites on such short notice or should I play with you some more and use something that I've secured just for this fight?" He rubbed his chin as if pondering his choices and then said, "I suppose, given how long the dead have been waiting for this moment, that I should do things properly...it'll be more fun this way anyway.

The ground around him began to crack and glow, and then it exploded as Vegeta let loose a mighty scream. The red-furred warrior was thrown into the sky and, for a moment, seemed off balance and vulnerable. The Saiyan Prince didn't waste his opportunity; he shot into the air and landed a series of devastating blows and then cupped his hands and powered up a ki blast.

"Final Flash!" he yelled as the enormous attack leapt from his palms and carried his enemy high into the air before exploding. The Saiyan Prince smiled as he watched the smoke clear, "Super Saiyan 4 or not, a Final Flash at point blank range will finish you off."

Suddenly, in the midst of the smoke, Vegeta thought he saw what looked like a tiny wisp of golden light. He gasped as a gust of wind carried much of the cloud away and revealed a completely unharmed warrior hovering high above him.

"You know, if you weren't so pathetic, that might have hurt," the young man said with a smirk.

Vegeta blinked in surprise and then the red furred warrior was in front of him.

"Goodbye monkey," the younger fighter whispered and then he yelled, "Amai kataki!" A yellow-green ki blast shot out of his mouth and slammed into the Saiyan Prince.

Vegeta crashed through the remains of Capsule Corp. and hit the floor with a large explosion that brought most of the rest of the building to the ground. The long, golden hair of the Saiyan shortened and then turned black as he slipped into unconsciousness.

The young man landed a short distance from the fallen prince and began shifting through the rubble. Less than a minute into his search, he came across the slightly crushed corpse of Bulma. Pulling the body out from under a piece of the wall, he smirked, tossed it over his should at Vegeta, and then resumed his search. It took five more minutes to find what he was looking for, but at last he located his duffle bag and pulled it free of the rubble.

"Well Vegeta, I have a little gift for you," the warrior said kicking the unconscious prince until he groggily opened his eyes. The young man unzipped the bag, pulled out a sword and held it up for Vegeta to see. "You know, this is one of the few remaining artifacts of a beautiful species; a species that had the potential to one day become one of the great civilizations in this universe. Oh, they didn't have much physical power, but their minds were truly amazing things. Unfortunately, in a universe populated by your kind and others like you, intelligence and potential mean very little; the only thing that matters is strength."

"Wha...what are you...talking about?" Vegeta asked as he struggled to remain conscious.

"I'm talking about the taint that the Saiyans have left upon the universe. You and your kind killed billions of people just so you could sell their planets for profit and sometimes just for fun. If you couldn't find a buyer or if you deemed the planet worthless, you destroyed it. Well _my prince_, the sins of your past have finally caught up with you. I am going to wipe the remainder of your race from this galaxy so that the spirits of those you've killed can finally rest in peace."

The young man lifted the sword above his head and scowled. "For Arlea!" he screamed as he drove the blade into Vegeta's chest all the way to the hilt and then twisted it. The Saiyan Prince's eyes went wide as blood began to bubble up out of his mouth and chest, mixing with the rain to form tiny red streams that flowed away from him; the young man leaned over and smirked as Vegeta's eyes began to cloud over in death.

"I hope you burn in hell with your bitch! Oh, and don't worry, your son and daughter will be joining you soon enough," he whispered with a chuckle as Vegeta breathed his last.

The young man stood and turned in the direction of the four rapidly approaching powers. They would be here in a matter of minutes. He'd almost played for too long, but with his speed and ki masking abilities, he could easily escape without being detected. He cast one last look at the bloody corpses of Vegeta and Bulma, drinking in the image.

"This is only the beginning," he said quietly and then flew along the ground and out of the city in the opposite direction of the four warriors, already planning his next move.

A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long to get out; the computer room has been occupied by my little sister the last couple of days, so I haven't been able to write much at night or in the morning which is when I usually prefer to work. Hopefully you won't have to wait as long for the next one. This fight was going to have a little more to it, but I just couldn't seem to get it to work the way I wanted it to, oh well, hopefully it wasn't too bad.

"Amai kataki" roughly (very) means "sweet revenge" in Japanese, I got the translation for the words from a web page, but as I don't speak the language, I don't know if it's quite right (I just thought it sounded kind of cool).

For anyone whose curious about the "Garlic Gun" attack Vegeta uses, that is the actual translation for one of his attacks, but in the dubbed versions it was called the Galic Gun. Usually I just go with the dubbed version as that's the only version I've ever seen, but I think Garlic Gun is a funnier name.

Toni the Mink: You are totally right, Bra is supposed to be living with Pan. I completely forgo...er, I mean...I don't know what you're talking about, Bra is living somewhere else. I never make mistakes! Like say, writing something down in an introduction and then completely spacing it as I write a story and later have to go back and take it out of the aforementioned introduction rather than rewrite portions of several chapters...that just doesn't happen! In all seriousness, good eye; I'm going to be changing the intro to say that Bra is going to school somewhere close to Capsule Corp. so she can have an internship there. By the way, did I do okay with Icalla? I know she didn't have too big of a part, but she's going to be playing a larger roll in upcoming chapters.

Everyone else: I'm glad I'm surprising everyone with my random murdering of two main characters; I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. Please remember to review, I love hearing from you all!


	8. Unwelcome Discovery

**Chapter Eight: Unwelcome Discovery**

Trunks put on a new burst of speed the moment he felt his father's ki signature vanish; he whispered a silent prayer to Kami that his father was only suppressing his energy, but a growing sense of dread was beginning to swell up inside of him. Within three minutes he, Gohan, Goten, and Pan were over the city; the sight made them stop in mid air.

"Holy Shit," Goten said quietly as they stared at the devastation; nearly a third of the city was in complete ruins. "I haven't seen anything like this since..." his voice trailed off as the unpleasant memory flooded over him.

"Not since dad and Vegeta fought Omega," Gohan finished.

Trunks was barely listening to them, his eyes were scanning the rubble for any sign of his father or whatever it was that he'd been fighting. And then, he realized what part of the city he was looking at, horror filled him completely.

"No...oh please no..." he shot forward with such suddenness that the others were left staring after him for a moment before they recovered from their shock and followed.

A few minutes later they landed just outside the ruins of what had once been a large, yellow dome. The top half of it had been blown off and there were several large holes in the walls, but even with all the damage, the Capsule Corp. logo was still clearly visible.

Trunks stared in disbelief at the building that had been his family's home for his entire life; he and Icalla were supposed to be here in an hour to have a nice dinner with the rest of his family.

"BUL-MA....VEGE-TA..." Pan called out, causing the three men to jump in surprise. "Oops, sorry," she said sheepishly as they turned and glared at her.

"No, you're right," Trunks replied, "let's go find mom and dad, maybe they can tell us what's happened here." The four Saiyans quickly spread out and began searching for Bulma and the Saiyan Prince.

Only a few minutes later, Gohan came across the two bodies. He tried to call out to the others, but his voice didn't seem to work anymore; all he could do was stare at the mangled corpse of two of his father's closest friends.

Eventually, his senses returned to him and he called out, "Trunks...you need to come here..."

The lavender haired Saiyan, followed closely by Goten and Pan, rounded the corner and let out a large, heart wrenching cry of sorrow. He fell to his knees in a large puddle of blood soaked mud and pulled his mother's bloody, corpse close to his chest; his eyes squeezed shut against the tears that were trying to escape. For a long time he just sat in the rain and rocked back and forth, not making a sound.

Gohan hugged Pan who was crying freely as she tried unsuccessfully to pull her gaze away from the two bodies.

Goten felt awkward as he watched his friend holding the once beautiful scientist; grief like this wasn't meant to be played out before an audience, but at the moment, there was little he could do to give Trunks any privacy. So he stepped over to the body of Vegeta and examined the Saiyan Prince's wounds.

Vegeta had obviously been through a large fight before he finally met his end, his many bruises and cuts were a testament to that, but it was definitely the sword that had finished him off. The youngest of the Son brothers looked at the blade curiously, it didn't seem to be all that special, just a large, crudely-made sword with a gold colored hilt and a red handle.

'_Who could possibly have the power to first of all beat Vegeta in a fight and secondly actually get a sword to pierce his skin?'_ Goten pondered for a moment. He was brought back to the real world by the sound of retching. Looking up quickly, he saw that the emotions and sights of the murders had finally overwhelmed Pan who was now bent over at the waist, emptying her stomach while Gohan held her long, dark hair away from her face and rubbed her back.

Goten was about to go help his brother when Trunks stopped rocking and gently set his mother on the ground. The lavender haired Saiyan stood and looked at them with an eerily calm face. Without a word to any of them he pulled out his cell phone and began to dial.

The suddenly cold droplets of water splashing down on him awoke Akira from his slumber. He stood up and turned off the shower, wondering how long he'd been lying there and praying that he wasn't late for dinner already. After drying himself off, wrapping a towel around his waist, and carefully concieling his tail, he realized that for the first in a long time he hadn't been a homicidal maniac when he woke up. He was pretty sure he'd dreamed about killing Vegeta and some other people, but the dream seemed hazy and was quickly becoming difficult to remember. Still, dream of murdering family aside, he felt better than he had in a while, he felt...satisfied, though he wasn't entirely sure why.

Suddenly his cell phone began to ring in one of his pockets; it took the young Saiyan a moment of digging through the pile of wet, dirty clothes lying on the bathroom floor to find his it.

"Trunks?" he said after seeing on the caller ID who was calling.

"Akira, you need to get over here as soon as possible," Trunks' voice sounded strange.

The young Saiyan's eyes went wide. "Oh crap! Am I late?" he asked in panic, "I fell asleep in the shower! Oh, I am so sorry. Is Bulma mad?" He ran into his room, desperately looking for something to wear.

The other side of the line was quiet for so long Akira thought the call might have been disconnected. "Um, hello?" he said while pulling several shirts out of the closet and then discarding them on the floor. "Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm just...just get over here quick, okay?"

"Alright, I'll be there in just a minute," Akira hung up the phone with the strangest feeling that something was going on that Trunks hadn't told him.

He eventually decided on some nice dress clothes which Bulma had said looked good on his, half hoping that by wearing something she liked he could avoid some of the scowling he was bound to receive. It was just as he was about to Instant Transmission himself over to Capsule Corp. that he noticed the clock on the wall.

'_I'm not supposed to be there for almost an hour!'_ he thought, feeling confused and suddenly more than a little bit worried. Shaking off these thoughts, he focused on Trunks' ki, placed two fingers to his forehead, and vanished.

It took just over a second for Akira to travel the hundreds of miles between Satan City and West Capital. When he rematerialized he wondered if he'd made a mistake somehow; he'd thought that he was going to appear inside the beautiful Capsule Corp. dome, but instead he was standing in the rain just inside a crumbling building. Glancing outside, he noticed that most of the surrounding area looked like it had been hit by a bomb. On the other side of the room, he could see Trunks, Gohan, Goten, and (much to his chagrin) Pan looking down at something on the floor, but they were blocking his view so Akira couldn't tell what it was.

"Hey, where are...we..." his voice trailed off as he noticed a broken picture frame holding a picture of Bra, Trunks, and himself on a recent family vacation. Trunks turned grief filled eyes towards him and stepped to the side revealing the bodies of Vegeta and Bulma.

"No," Akira whispered as he fell to his knees; his mind rebelled against the sight. It couldn't be real, it wasn't possible. He closed his eyes as tears began running down his face.

Pan watched the young man cry. She tried to hate him for the words that he'd said to her only a few hours ago, but somehow she couldn't do it. Not when he was in this kind of pain. She crossed the distance between the two of them knelt beside him and gently put her arms around him. At first Akira seemed to resist the comfort she was offering, but then he slowly melted into her embrace as he reached his arms up and hugged her back, softly sobbing as he buried his face in her shirt.

After several minutes, he stood up and looked at her; for a moment his face was filled with a jumble of emotions, as if he wasn't sure what or how to feel about hugging her, and then cold rage washed all other emotions from his face.

"Who. Did. This?" he demanded as he turned to face Trunks, Goten, and Gohan. "Who ever it was, I swear I will hunt them down and rip them limb from limb."

"We don't know," Gohan said quietly. "We couldn't feel any other power level around Vegeta when he was fighting."

"So it's someone like Ammit...or me?" a strange vision of himself plunging a sword into Vegeta's chest leapt into his mind, but he quickly dismissed it as nothing more than a memory from one of his dreams.

"Akira," Trunks' voice cut through the young man's thoughts, "we need to get to Namek. When we wish mom and dad back, we can ask them who did it."

Akira nodded, "Alright, let's go."

The young man placed his hand on Trunks' shoulder and the two of them were gone.

King Kai fell over as Akira and Trunks suddenly appeared right in front of him.

"You're back...uh, why are you back Akira?" the deity asked.

"We have to get to Namek for the dragonballs," Trunks replied for the young man, who was busily searching for the distant planet.

"Yeah, I know, but I thought he alre—" King Kai started to say with a perplexed look.

"Got it," Akira interrupted and he and Trunks once again vanished.

A/N: The title for this chapter was taken from an episode of Dragonball Z. The episode doesn't have anything to do with this chapter, but I couldn't think of anything else to call it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, I'm not sure that I like it, but it's probably because there's a lot of emotions flying around that I (thankfully) have no real experience with, so it's hard for me to write about.

Toni the Mink: I know I said this last time, but you have a very good eye, but, well, I guess you'll have to wait and see if you were right...

R-Krulle: Don't worry, the villain will start slowly (probably very slowly for a while) coming into focus, but in the next chapter there will probably be at least a small scene with him/her/it.

Everyone else: I'm glad you liked the fight scene and don't worry; this isn't the last we'll see of Vegeta...at least not yet.


	9. Bad News from Namek

**Chapter Nine: Bad News from Namek**

o

Akira and Trunks materialized in the middle of a cluster of Namekian huts and instantly recoiled at the sight and smell of death. Bodies were strewn everywhere and the ground was covered in sticky, purple blood. Some of the Nameks where missing arms or legs, others were completely cut in half, and still more looked like they'd simply been beaten to death. Akira nearly threw up.

"I don't get it," he said as he choked down bile, "they were alive when we left King Kai's planet; if they weren't I couldn't have gotten us here."

Trunks knelt next to the nearest whole body and placed his fingers against its neck. He wasn't sure if a Namek's pulse could be checked there, but the body still answered one of his questions. "This guy's still warm," he announced.

"Is he..." Akira looked suddenly hopeful.

"No, he's definitely dead, but I don't think he's been that way for too long."

"Then whoever did this might still be around!" the younger Saiyan exclaimed.

Trunks nodded, "Perhaps, or maybe they were close to death when we left and died during the trip."

Akira thought about it for a moment. "I guess it's possible, it would have taken us a couple of minutes to get here," he conceded. "Actually, now that I think about it, their life force did feel kind of weak when we were on King Kai's planet...if I hadn't known where I was supposed to look, I might not have been able to find them. I thought it was just because they were so far away, but maybe..."

"There's no point in speculating now, the only thing that matters is finding Muri so we can use the dragonballs to bring back everyone that's died today."

The two Saiyans headed in opposite directions as they searched the village, hoping to find a survivor amongst the dead.

After almost an hour of searching, Akira was about ready to give up and declare the village a complete loss. He'd tried sensing for power levels, but if there was anyone left alive, they were either too weak to feel, or suppressing their energy to hide. He had just turned to see if Trunks was having any better luck when he saw a slight movement in some tall grass at the edge of the village.

"Uh, hello? Is there someone there?" he asked, cautiously approaching the grass. There was no answer, so he bent down and peered into the tall weeds. Suddenly a fist shot out and slammed into the side of his head.

Akira was sent crashing into a nearby hut. Fortunately, the blow wasn't strong enough to actually do any damage to him and the young Saiyan was quickly on his feet. He watched in confusion as a battered and bloody Namekian warrior rose out of the grass and raised his power level slightly.

"Murderer!" the Namek snarled, "why have you returned?"

"What are you talking about?" Akira asked in confusion.

"You kill all of my people and leave me for dead and you ask what I'm talking about?"

Akira's eyes narrowed, "I haven't killed anyone," he said firmly. "I'm only here for the dragonba—"

"Lies!" the Namek screamed. "The dragonballs are gone; you made sure of that when you slew Elder Mouri!" The warrior's power began to grow larger, but Akira could tell that the stress was quickly becoming too great for the Namek's badly injured body to maintain.

"Stop," he pleaded, "you're going to kill yourself if you try to fight me. I don't want to hurt you."

The Namek smirked, "Too late for that I'd say; I'm going to die no matter what. I may as well go out trying to avenge my fallen people."

The green warrior rushed forward and threw a punch at Akira's face which the Saiyan dodged easily. His instincts screamed for him to retaliate, but he refused to do anything other than block and evade; which wasn't exactly difficult, given how weak the Namek already was.

It took less than five minutes for the warrior to wear down and fall to his knees clutching his chest and breathing hard; blood poured from old wounds that had reopened while he attacked Akira and from others that had never closed.

"Look, the Earth's warriors and the Nameks have always helped each other, so please, tell me why you're attacking me like this," the young Saiyan asked quietly.

The green warrior laughed and called out in a loud voice, "Funny, last time you were here you said you had to wipe us from the universe because we've been helping the Saiyans from Earth..." The Namek coughed up blood, "Why are you tormenting me? Wasn't it enough for you to slaughter my people?"

"I...I didn't kill anyone, I swear." Somehow Akira no longer felt as confident in his own words as he had a few minutes earlier.

The Namek looked up and scowled, "Fuck you and your games!" he screamed as he poured the last of his energy into a ki blast that he threw at the young Saiyan.

Akira backhanded it away easily, following the blast with his eyes until it exploded high in the sky. When he turned back to the fallen Namek, the green warrior was face down in the grass, eyes glazed over in death.

"What was that all about?" Trunks' voice came from just behind Akira, causing him to jump slightly in surprise.

"I...I think his injuries had driven him mad...he just attacked me."

"Did he say anything about what happened here?"

The younger Saiyan glanced back down at the Namek. "He...uh...no, he didn't say anything. Just attacked me for no reason," Akira lied. Something told him that it might not be a good idea to start spreading around the idea that he could be the killer. With his eyes on the body, Akira didn't see the lavender haired Saiyan's eyes narrow.

"Well, I think maybe we should go then," Trunks said quietly.

"Do you want to look for another village?"

Trunks shook his head, "There's no point, this planet is a graveyard now and we both know it."

Akira nodded in resignation, "Okay...let's get out of here." He placed his hand on Trunks shoulder and the two Saiyans vanished once again.

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King Kai looked up as Akira and Trunks briefly appeared on his planet.

"Ak—" he started to say, but the two Saiyans were gone almost as soon as they arrived.

"Damn it!" the North Kai cursed, "Can't anyone take sometime to explain just what the hell is going on to me?" He turned to Bubbles and Gregory, who looked up at him in confusion, "How is it that the one day I spend looking at one of the ten thousand other planets in my quadrant is the day the Earth decides to go all to HFIL? Can't those people go more than ten minutes without some sort of super villain showing up out of no where and trashing the place?"

The monkey and bug looked at each other and shrugged before wondering off to find something else to do.

"Maybe I can answer your question," a gruff voice called out from behind the deity.

King Kai turned and smiled, "Ah, I was wondering when you'd show up Vegeta."

Pan, Goten, and Gohan were sitting on large pieces of rubble, carrying on a quiet conversation when Akira and Trunks returned to Earth.

"Did you..." Goten started to ask.

Trunks turned his head away, too upset by the day's events to even think about what the failed mission meant. He noticed that someone had covered the bodies of his parents with a pair of sheets that had probably come from what was left of the upstairs bedrooms; the lavender haired Saiyan was grateful that he didn't have to see Bulma and Vegeta's bloody corpses anymore.

"No, the Nameks are all dead," Akira answered for him.

"This is no coincidence," Gohan said quietly. "Whoever killed Vegeta and Bulma knew that we'd try and revive them with the dragonballs and so they killed the Nameks too. We're facing someone who knows us very, very well; and if they were on Namek only hours after being here then they know something like Instant Transmission or else theirs more than one of them."

Akira, Pan, and Goten nodded in agreement; Trunks just stared at the red stained sheets lying not too far from him.

"So, what do we do know," Goten asked.

No one had an answer for him.

The five Saiyans stood in silence for several minutes before Akira finally said, "I need to get out of here...I...I just need to go think...or something."

"I think that's good advice for all of us," Gohan said, looking around. "There's nothing we can do here. We don't have any clue who or what did this or even why, but if he, or they, knows us well enough to know about Namek's dragonballs, then we have to assume that our families aren't safe." Gohan's face became grim at the thought, "I think we should call everyone together tomorrow, we'll see what we can do then..."

"What should I do about...them?" Trunks asked in a soft voice. No one needed to be told which 'them' he was referring to.

"Well, I don't think we want the police trying to deal with this; anything that can defeat Vegeta is going to be way out of their league anyway," Gohan reasoned, "I guess the best thing to do is make whatever arrangements need to be made and have a funeral. With all the chaos in the city we can probably leave them where they are or at most move them upstairs without worrying too much about someone discovering them anytime soon."

Trunks nodded as tears began to well up in his eyes once more.

Akira walked over to him, placed a hand on his should and whispered, "We'll get whoever did this." Without another word he shot into the air and headed away from the city.

Pan watched him go for a moment, torn between two desires. Finally she gave into the stronger of the two and took off after her former boyfriend.

Goten and Gohan remained with Trunks until he was a little calmer, and then they flew with him to Icalla's apartment before heading to their own homes.

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"Wait up Akira!" Pan called out as she slowly closed the distance between her and the swift moving warrior. "We need to talk."

The spiky haired Saiyan stopped and turned; he really didn't want to talk to her at the moment, but knew she'd just follow him anywhere he went anyway.

"What?" he asked brusquely.

"I want to know the truth."

"The truth about what?"

"Why you broke up with me," she said sternly. "I know you fed me a bunch of crap earlier. I went home and cried about it for over an hour, but in the end, I don't think you'd do that to me. I think I know you better than that and you're not that kind of guy."

Akira smirked, "So, what, some sort of woman's intuition gave you this supposed insight into my soul?"

"No, my heart did," Pan's eyes began to swell with tears. "I love you Akira and I know you love me. I can see it in your eyes even now."

The Saiyan turned away from her, closing his eyes tightly, struggling with his emotions. "What do you want from me?" he asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

"I want to know what's happening to you! Akira, just let me in again, let me help you," she pleaded.

Akira spun around and faced her, his eyes blazing, "You want the truth? You want to know if I lied? Fine, I did lie; everything I said was a lie. I do love you...more than you could possibly know. And as the man who loves you I will say this once and only once: Stay away from me!" he shouted and then in a quiet voice added, "for your own good." A golden aura exploded around him like an inferno as golden fur covered his body. In the blink of an eye he was gone.

Pan knew there would be no following him now, she couldn't sense his power level, couldn't see him, and couldn't even reach him with her mind. Akira was completely closed off to her, but he did love her, and that was something. She was puzzled by his words, confused about why he thought he had to lie to her, why he had tried to hurt her so badly that she'd never want to see him again.

'_One things for sure,'_ she thought as she stared in the direction she thought he'd headed, _'if he thinks I'm letting the man I love face his demons alone, he's got another thing coming!'_

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"_Please, please, why are you doing this?" a green skinned farmer asked as he backed away. He looked around wildly, but the rest of his village was already dead or dying._

"_Don't blame me...blame your elders. They're the ones that chose the monkeys over the good of the universe."_

Akira thrashed about in his sleep, sweat rolled down the side of his face as he fought against the dream.

"_Wha...what are you talking about? We don't know any monkeys," the Namek shook with fear as the unstoppable warrior stalked towards him._

"_The Saiyans you fool! You and your magical dragonballs are a liability, I'm afraid I can't let you slugs keep reviving them after I've gone through the trouble of killing them."_

"_The Saiyans saved the universe from Frieza and...and Cell and Buu and...and Ba—"_

_His voice was forever silenced by a hand slicing through his throat._

"_A lot of good that does the people the so called saviors of the universe chose to wipe out."_

Akira's hands dug into the soft earth he was laying on, his face flinched as each scene of the terrifying dream played out before his closed eyes in all their glory. The forest animals wisely stayed well clear of the area the thrashing Saiyan was sleeping in.

_There was not much light coming from the windows to the house, but in the dark of night it still stood out in stark contrast from the rest of the world around it. Practiced eyes might have been able to see the dark shadow zip from tree to tree as he made his way closer to the house with as much speed as he dared; each foot step was completely silent. _

_The shadow glanced through the portal of light as soon as he reached it and saw an older, but still attractive, woman softly weeping as she looked at a photo album. He couldn't see what the pictures were of, but it wasn't a hard to guess. He tightened his grip on his knife and waited for his opportunity. Just as she seemed to be settling down for the night, a noise came from upstairs. With lightening fast reflexes, he ducked away from the window and pinned himself against the wall. The old woman was not the only one still awake._

_He glanced up at the upstairs window and carefully levitated towards it. He chanced a quick peak at first and then, after seeing that no one was near the window, he peered inside. The noise had obviously come from the man hunched over his desk; he had several books open in front of him and appeared to be taking notes from each of them. However, it was obvious that he wouldn't be awake much longer as his head was bobbing up and down in a vain attempt to remain conscious._

_Two minutes later the man turned off the small light he'd been using to read and climbed into bed with his wife. The shadow dropped silently to the ground and glanced through the lower window once more._

_The older woman was no were to be seen, but a light from the hallway revealed that she had simply gone to the bathroom. The shadow placed his hand against the glass of the window and slowly channeled energy through it; in seconds the glass had completely melted away. He levitated himself through the window with a smile._

_The woman was drying her eyes as she stepped back into her room, she looked like she'd been crying for several hours and would probably have done more of it in the morning if given the chance. She had only taken a few steps toward the bed when she noticed the breeze, as her eyes slowly moved to the window they went wide in alarm._

_Just as she opened her mouth to call for her son, a powerful hand latched onto her and pulled her head back._

"_I know you didn't know what your husband was when you married him," a familiar voice whispered in her ear, "or even when you had his half-breed son, and for that reason I was tempted to let you live, but even after you knew, you still had another child with him. Because of you the Saiyan race which had shrunk to only two was able to expand once more, and I'm afraid that is just unforgivable."_

_With a flick of his wrist, he snapped her neck so hard her head almost spun 360 degrees around. He carried the corpse to the bed, pulled back the covers and laid her down. With a smile he slid the blade along her stomach and chest, splitting her completely open before covering her with the blanket. With the exception of the blood that was slowly seeping through the mattress and blanket, she almost looked completely natural._

_The temptation to climb the stairs and finish off the others in the house was strong, but he resisted for the moment. It was far more fun to watch them suffer slowly; soon the revenge of Arlia would be complete._

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A/N: Well, since I got eight reviews in less than three days for the last chapter, I figured I should hurry up and write out the next one. Actually, I think this has been my favorite chapter thus far. Anyway, let me know what you think. Thanks for all the reviews, they totally make my day.

Toni the Mink: Sorry if my reply email was stupid, I was a little annoyed that you figured part of the story out that quick. I'd been thinking how clever I was to use such an obscure thing and then you up and figured it out on me! Oh well, thanks for not putting it in your review so the others can be hopelessly lost in the dark for as long as possible.

Anouk: Man, you and Toni are really impressively quick. If I wasn't writing the story I don't think I would have figured things out nearly as fast as you guys did. Also thanks to you for not giving to much info away about what you figured out.

Erica: I think you'll be quite happy with the eventual response from Trunks. Unfortunately it won't be happening for a little while yet, but hang with me and he'll get there.

Everyone else: I'm glad you didn't think the emotions in the last chapter were terrible, I still don't like it. Even after rereading it a couple of times, it still seems forced, but oh well, I'm over it. Thanks for the reviews.


	10. Waking Chichi

**Chapter Ten: Waking Chi-chi**

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Dawn had not yet broke upon the Son house, but Videl was already wide awake. Careful not to wake Gohan, she climbed out of bed, threw on some clothes, and headed down stairs. She knew that Chi-chi was normally an early riser, so she thought she might enjoy an early morning cup of coffee with her mother-in-law before the reality of the previous days events settled over the house, but sadly, Chi-chi was not in the kitchen and the coffee pot was empty.

Videl frowned as she made a pot and glanced over her shoulder at the door to the guest bedroom. _'I really thought Chi-chi would be up by now...well, I guess she was probably up late thinking; Gohan sure was.'_

In truth, they had all been up very late; too upset by the murders of their friends to find sleep. Videl had dropped off before Gohan, but her dreams were terrifying and disturbing, waking her much earlier than usual. She desperately wanted someone to wake up and give her some company. If Pan were home, Videl would have woken her, knowing that her daughter wouldn't mind too much, but she had gone to her apartment so her roommates could make sure she went to her final. Gohan had told her she didn't need to take it, but the young woman had said her grade was high enough to pass the class so long as she turned up for the test and handed something in. Videl thought about waking Gohan or Chi-chi, but figured they'd both need as much rest as they could get.

Several hours later, Gohan was awake, dressed, and sitting on the couch lost in thought; while Chi-chi had yet to make a sound.

"Do you think we should check on your mom?" Videl asked the Saiyan; waking him from his contemplations.

"What? Oh, uh yeah sure, go ahead..." he said as his eyes glazed over once again.

The dark haired woman walked to the door at the end of the hall and knocked softly, "Chi-chi, are you awake?"

There was no answer.

"Um...it's after ten, do you want some breakfast?"

Silence.

Videl began to feel slightly worried. Chi-chi was an incredibly light sleeper, as Videl and Gohan had learned when they started dating, and if Chi-chi didn't wasn't to be bothered she would have been yelling by now.

Videl took a deep breath and knocked loudly on the door, "Chi-chi, I'm coming in, okay?" She opened the door and walked through.

Chi-chi was lying in bed under a splotchy red blanket with her back to the door. Videl gently placed a hand on the older woman's shoulder.

"Wha—" she gasped as she pulled her blood covered hand away from the damp material and stared at it. Her eyes grew wide as they darted back and forth between the motionless Chi-chi and the crimson liquid running down her hand. "Go...Gohan! Oh, Kami...Gohan..."

Gohan rushed into the room with a confused expression on his face, he took one look at his wife's pale, horror-stricken face and then looked at his mother's unmoving form. A breeze brushed across his face and his eyes shifted to the window. He swallowed hard as he saw the melted hole in the glass; in that instant he knew what had happened, but his mind just couldn't accept it. Gohan steeled his nerves, walked across the room, and pulled back the covers; his breath caught in his throat.

Chi-chi's body had been split open from just under her collar bone to her belly button. Without muscle, bone, or skin to hold them in place, many of her organs had spilled out onto the bed during the night and the mattress and blanket where soaked in blood.

The Saiyan's blood boiled with anger and grief, his body shook for a moment and then golden ki exploded around him as he screamed in rage.

ooo

Pan's pencil snapped in her hand as she felt her father's power level shoot up. Without hesitation she picked up her test and handed it in. She had only completed half of the questions, but the thought of her grade didn't even cross her mind, the only thing she cared about was getting to her father and finding out what was happening. She ran from the room and shot into the air the moment she was outside, not even bothering to make sure no one was around to see.

ooo

Akira awoke with a start in the middle of the woods. He could feel several warriors heading for a very large one.

'_Probably Gohan,'_ he realized as he closed his eyes and tried to focus on who the different power levels were coming from. One was definitely Pan, she was the farthest from the Gohan, another was probably Goten and the rest were probably Tien, Yamcha, and Krillin. Akira had trained with Trunks often enough to recognize his life force and he was in West Capital with Bra and presumably Icalla.

The young man considered using Instant Transmission to check on Gohan, but as he thought about it, he realized that the scholar wasn't moving the way he would if he were in a fight, he had just powered up for some reason.

Chi-chi's wide, terror filled eyes flashed into his mind; Akira knew recognized it from a dream, he thought. It seemed like he had been having difficulties recalling the nightmares once he was awake, or maybe it was just that the dreams and reality seemed to have merged into some sort of twisted world. He tried to remember what he'd dreamed about the night before and while he was sure that he'd had another dream of murdering people, he couldn't remember who or how...but it was definitely more than one...maybe.

Akira shook his head, trying to clear the image from his mind. He was definitely not going to check on Gohan unless he felt a significant drop off in power. He needed time to think over what was happening and it with Pan already headed there, he didn't want to make the situation between them any more awkward than it already was. He'd wait to hear from them, if it was something important, and he was pretty sure that it was, then they would call and let him know.

Akira crossed his legs and closed his eyes as he tried to clear his mind and meditate.

ooo

The first thing Pan heard when she walked into her parents' house was, "Don't come in here Pan." So, of course, she immediately went into the guest bedroom.

The first thing she saw was her grandmother's mutilated corpse, followed by her father and uncle (both in Super Saiyan form) hugging each other and crying, while her mother was looking at her with tear soaked eyes.

"Pan, honey, I'm...I'm so sorry, but she's gone..." Videl choked out.

The young woman backed away from the doorway, her mother made a move to try and stop her, but Pan was already out the door and heading for the mountains.

She flew as fast and as far as she could before her emotions got the better of her. She landed in a sobbing heap and proceeded to pound a near by boulder into dust; still not satisfied, she charged a ki blast in her hand and launched it at a nearby mountain, reducing it to nothingness in an instant. A small twig snapped just behind her and she spun with another blast already charging, ready to kill anything that dared infringe upon her grief.

Akira caught her hand before she had a chance to fire and pulled her into a tight hug.

"Aki...Grandma, she's...she..." Pan couldn't even bring herself to say it.

"Shhh, I know. Your mom called a minute ago and told me," Akira whispered.

"Why...why would someone do something like that?"

Akira didn't have an answer, or perhaps more frighteningly he did, but refused to tell her. Akira knew that it had gotten to the point where he had to tell his friends about his dreams, but he simply couldn't bring himself to say it. Whether it was out of fear or something else, he wasn't completely sure, but he knew he had to do it.

The two Saiyans stood there for over an hour without letting each other go or saying much, they simply help one another and grieved until Akira's cell phone rang. Gohan was calling to let them know that all of the Z Fighters were going to meet at Kami House as soon as they could all get there. Akira hung up and told Pan what was happening, she took in the news without comment.

The young man started to levitate off the ground, but Pan grabbed his hand and pulled him back to the ground.

"I...I need to ask you, why don't you want to be with me?" she asked tentatively.

Akira closed his eyes and sighed, "I know this sounds lame, but...it's not you, it's me. It's, it's complicated." The young Saiyan was silent for a moment as he tried to put into words what was going through his head without saying anything about his nightmares.

"You said I should stay away from you for my own good..."

"Yeah, I know and I still believe that, but...I..." it was pointless, there was no way he could get her to see that he was right without saying something that he really didn't want to say. "Look, let's just get to Kami House, we'll talk about this later...I promise."

Pan didn't like his answer or the fact that he was obviously hiding something, but her mind was too mixed up with everything else that had happened in the past day and a half to fight about it any more. She simply nodded numbly and followed him as he shot into the air and headed south.

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A/N: Sorry this took so long to get out. I have only myself to blame...well, I guess I could blame Mr. Kashimoto for creating such a freaky addictive manga like Naruto which I spent most of my free time this week reading (229 chapters and I'd still be reading if there were more that had been translated into English). So, once again, sorry; now that I've read all that I guess I'll have more time to write while I await the next chapter.


	11. The Meeting

**Chapter Eleven: The Meeting**

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The living room of Kami House had more people crammed into it than ever before. All of the Z-Fighters, their wives, and their children were sitting on the couch, the floor, or some chairs that were scattered throughout the room. Akira, leaning against a doorway with his arms crossed in a very Vegeta-like manner, was the only person standing. Feeling incredibly uncomfortable being surrounded by a group of people who were mourning something he feared he was responsible for, he had taken a spot as far away from the others as possible.

The group sat in an uncomfortable silence for several minutes until Krillin decided that someone needed to get things going.

"So, uh, I'm guessing everyone knows what's happened in the last two days...so, obviously the reason we're here is to figure out what we do now," the grey haired fighter cleared his throat, "I mean, how do we fight this...whatever it is...and how do we keep our families safe?" There was a long moment of silence while everyone looked blankly at each other.

"Well, I think we need to stick together," Tien said from a chair against the wall. "If everyone's together then we can watch each other's backs and no one has to fight alone." There were several murmurs of agreement from around the room.

Akira watched and listened silently, his face devoid of emotion, but his mind turning Tien's idea over and over. He was sure that grouping everyone together was stupid, but he wasn't sure if it was because he wanted to make it harder on himself to kill them all or if it was because he wanted to make sure they all survived. Regardless of what the other Z-Fighters decided to do and his guilt or lack-there-of, he was fairly certain he shouldn't be privy to the details of their plans. He still couldn't bring himself to believe that he had committed those crimes, but the evidence was becoming pretty convincing.

He closed his eyes and sighed, wondering what sort of excuse would be needed to get him out of the room before anything vital was discussed when he realized something: he could sense almost every single person in the room regardless of where they were; the only ones that were safe from someone with his kind of power were Android 18 and the human non-fighters who would be camouflaged by the rest of the earth's population. Even if the Z-Fighters suppressed their powers to the point of being invisible, they wouldn't be able to do it forever; all of them had base powers far above those of the average human and as soon as they weren't consciously suppressing their power, they would naturally return to that base and stand out like a torch in a dark room.

_'Launch, Marron, Valese and the others would be safe if they stayed somewhere far away from anyone that can manipulate ki; Videl is iffy, but she's gone so long without training it would probably be safe for her to stay with them,' _he thought as his eyes roamed the room. _'Roshi definitely has to stay with the other fighters...not that anyone would want him left alone with their wives or daughters anyway.'_

He was still mulling it over when he noticed Valese valiantly struggling to keep her grasp on the tiny terror known as Kumo. In truth, the two and a half year old had held still far longer than could really be expected of a child his age and now that his little mind had locked onto the idea of finding something to play with there was little his mother could do to stop him. Though he still hadn't mastered the art of peeing in the 'potty' or eating without making a huge mess, the toddler was easily more powerful than his mother. In a matter of seconds he had broken free from her and was about to run out the room when his father scooped him up and held him tight. The little boy was not pleased.

"No!" Kumo wailed as he struggled against Goten's grip, "No tantu daddy! Wanna play!"

Valese smiled apologetically to everyone, took the child into her arms and headed outside to let him play. Through the window Akira saw Kumo make a bee line for the beautiful, blue ocean the moment his feet hit the ground.

The young man smiled, _'It must be nice to be a child,'_ he thought, _'nothing to worry about, except where to find your next bit of fun...'_ The smile faded to a frown, when Kumo had been mad a moment before his power level had risen greatly, enough that it would be easy to notice if you were looking for it. If the woman and children were going to go into hiding, Kumo couldn't go with them. One tantrum, one nightmare, one popped balloon would be enough to give them all away. He glanced over at Bra who was sitting next to Trunks and Icalla, even without much training, she too would be enough to give the others away.

The sound of Goten's voice brought Akira back to the real world, "Alright then, Trunks will get a couple of house capsules and we'll find somewhere secluded to set up camp. Then we'll all take turns patrolling and looking for this basta--"

"We've overlooked something," Akira interrupted; everyone turned and looked at him. "If we're all in a group and this guy can sense ki levels we'll be sitting ducks. He's strong enough to beat Vegeta and can't be sensed, he could hit us anytime he wanted and we'd never see it coming."

"How is that any different than it is now?" Gohan asked.

Akira let out another sigh, it was a bad idea that he was the one planning the strategy, but the rest of them were scared and grieving, they weren't thinking straight. "Look, it's not that I don't think we should be together and face this thing all at once if possible, but that's not how this guy is operating. He's playing with us."

"What makes you say that?" Trunks asked with a slight edge to his voice.

"Gohan and Videl were upstairs and probably asleep when Chi-chi was killed. If he could defeat Vegeta...no offence Gohan, but you wouldn't have stood a chance against him even if you saw him coming." He paused as the full weight of his words sunk in.

"I take it you have some sort of better idea," Goten probed.

"The women and children need to be as far from us as possible, preferably in a populated area where they won't stand out much."

Gohan nodded, "You're probably right...but we can't just leave them unprotected with this monster on the loose, we'd need someone who can be there without being detected." He turned and looked at the ageless beauty sitting in-between Krillin and Marron. "18, you would need to go with them."

"The hell I will," she shouted, jumping to her feet in anger. "I sat out the battle with Ammit; I'm not sitting this one out. Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean that I need to always be put on babysitting duty."

"But--" Goten started to say.

"No, I'm stronger than any of the non-Saiyans here except for Uubu--"

"Yeah, we kn--" Gohan tried.

"So it's stupid to keep me from fighting--"

Akira listened to them going back and forth and growled; none of them understood what they were dealing with. "Shut up!" he screamed as the barrier that hid his power dropped and golden ki exploded around him; his power level shot up past what Vegeta had shown during their final sparring session as he ascended to Super Saiyan two. The rest of the people in the room were too shocked to say anything as the incredible energy swirled around the room. Akira was doing his best to control its flow so as not to destroy the house, but still wanted to make sure they felt how immense it was.

"This is only just enough to have beaten Vegeta, which means that whoever this guy is he's probably stronger, maybe a lot stronger. That is what we are up against and you won't be able to feel it coming." He turned his attention to 18, "You aren't being asked to baby-sit, you're being asked to buy us enough time to come help you if, kami-forbid, you are discovered. Most likely, you'll be dead before we get there, but it's our only choice." He powered down and turned back to Gohan and said, "She is right about one thing, anyone weaker than a Super Saiyan doesn't stand a chance in this fight and even a Super Saiyan won't last long."

Pan jumped to her feet, "So what should we do then? Cower in our houses hoping we're not the next ones one this psycho's list?"

Akira was silent for a long time. There was nothing he could say, everyone in this room was going to die even if he wasn't the killer. They just didn't have the power to fight against this enemy. He could feel tears start to fill his eyes so he closed them and started to walk to the door.

Just as he was about to pass through it he stopped and called over his shoulder, "If you send those who can't fight somewhere safe, don't send Kumo or Bra with them. They're both powerful enough to attract attention."

"Wait! Where are you going?" Pan asked.

"I justâI need to get out of here."

"Well, if you're going to leave, why don't you go see Dende," Gohan suggested, Akira turned and looked at him in confusion. "I was thinking that if Dende could make a new set of dragonballs, we could wish everyone back. Plus, since they'd be new, we wouldn't have to worry about the shadow dragons, because these balls wouldn't be tainted like the others."

Akira nodded, stepped outside, and then shot into the air while a giggling Kumo waved happily at him. Pan stared out the window for a moment and then took off after him.

ooo

Akira's light blue aura cut effortlessly through the air as he flew in the general direction of the Lookout; he really had no desire to ever get there. It wasn't that he didn't like Dende, far from it actually as the Earth's Guardian usually had plenty of wonderful food waiting for his guests, but the fact that the aging Namek knew so much was a bit intimidating. Akira had never asked just how much Dende knew about the everyday events on Earth, but he was certain that anything involving the Z-Fighters would be pretty closely monitored, which meant that the Namek would know if Akira was a murderer or not.

_'At least I'll know whether or not I've lost it and become evil,'_ he thought with an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He was so wrapped up in his jumbled thoughts and conflicting emotions that he flew for over an hour without realizing that he was being followed; it wasn't until he reached the outskirts of South Capital that he felt the familiar ki a short distance behind him. He didn't even need to bother focusing to know that it was Pan; the question was did he really want to stop.

Akira knew he was playing with her heart, whether it was intentional or not, and it wasn't fair for him to continue doing it. He'd told her he didn't want to see her the day before and then showed up to comfort her when her grandmother was killed the very next day. No doubt she was feeling almost as emotionally jerked around as he was. He vowed then and there that he would make things permanent one way or another.

_'If Dende says that I killed Vegeta, Bulma, and Chi-chi then I'll...well, I don't know what I'll do,' _he suddenly realized that he had no idea what would happen if he was guilty. It wasn't like there was a prison that could hold him or a person with the power to stop him. Really, the only solution was his death, by the hands of his friends and family if they could bring themselves to do it or by his own if they couldn't. It was the only way; if Dende confirmed his fears he could kneel before Trunks and Gohan, power down as far as possible, tell them the truth, and then die with what little honor he'd have left. If the Namek said that he was innocent he would make everything up to Pan and he would crush whoever it was that had committed the murders.

He needed to know the truth and he needed it immediately. Akira stopped flying forward, brought two fingers to his forehead, and searched for the powerful life-force of the Earth's Guardian.

ooo

After over an hour of flying as fast as she could without transforming, Pan was finally starting to close in on Akira when he suddenly pulled up and hovered in mid air, his right hand in front of his face. She'd seen him do that trick often enough to know what he was doing.

"Akira, wait!" she yelled as she sped towards him. To her relief and slight surprise he did not vanish before she got to him. "Hey, let's go toge--" her voice caught in her throat when she saw the look on his face. The young man had gone very pale, his eyes were wide in terror, and his mouth hung open in shock.

"Wha...what's wrong?" Pan asked uneasily. Akira didn't seem to hear her or even see her.

"No..." he whispered, "But it I...then they're...Shit!"

His golden aura erupted around him with such power that Pan was sent tumbling end over end through the air. As she struggled to regain control of her flight, the young woman caught sight of Akira rocketing through the sky with such speed that the clouds were flowing behind him, caught up in his wake. She frowned with concern as she transformed and chased after him as best she could.

ooo

When Pan arrived at the enormous building floating above Korrin's Tower, she found Akira, his back to the palace, standing at the Lookout's edge; his eyes where closed tightly and his face was filled with grief. It didn't take long for her to see the reason for his behavior.

Lying next to one of the rows of palm trees was Mr. Popo's body or at least part of it, Pan realized as a wave of nausea hit her. The rest of it appeared to be several feet away by the other row of trees. Whoever had killed the assistant of the Kamis had literally ripped him in half; the once beautiful white, marble tiles in between the two rows of trees were now stained crimson with blood.

"We have to find Dende," Pan said quickly.

"There's no point," Akira replied without opening his eyes. "He's dead, all of them are. Korrin, Yajirobe, Dende; their all gone."

Pan shook her head, refusing to believe that such a thing was possible and that Akira had written them all off so quickly. "Fine, stay here if you want, I'm going to go help them," she said fiercely and hurried into the palace. Akira didn't give any sign that he'd heard her or that he cared she was gone; he just continued to stand motionlessly at the edge of the Lookout.

_'It happened again, but I don't even remember this one...I don't think,'_ for a moment he wished he could remember more of his dreams from the night before, and then he thought it might be better that he didn't. There was no doubt in his mind what the dreams were of. Still, he didn't have the definitive answer that he craved and now there was no living being that could give it to him. Suddenly a thought struck him, _'Just because he's not alive doesn't mean he won't know._'

His fingers went to his forehead and he vanished.

ooo

Pan ran into the Palace and yelled for Dende, receiving no answer; she continued to run from room to room until she came across the sight that she'd been dreading most. The Namek was lying on his back in one of the rooms, his mouth open in surprise and his eyes glazed over in death. A hole was burned clean through his chest and a puddle of purple blood had covered much of the floor.

Tears burned in Pan's eyes as she turned from the sight and hurried out of the palace. A quick glance around told her that Akira was gone, she couldn't really blame him though she wished he'd at least waited for her. She ran to the edge of the Lookout and leapt off the edge, letting gravity build up her speed for her as she plummeted back to earth.

As she passed Korrin's tower she put the breaks on and floated back up to the window, Korrin's white fur had become red from lying in his own blood for so long, his staff was broken and lying in the corner. Yajirobe was lying face down in another pool of blood, his ever present katana sticking out of his back.

_'I'm going to make the sick bastard who did this pay when I get my hands on him!'_ she vowed as she turned and headed back to Kami House.

o

o

A/N: Well, here's the next chapter. After how long the last one took (and it was pretty short too) I hope you enjoy the fact that this took only two days and is nearly twice as long as the last one. Let me know if you see any bad spelling or grammar mistakes, I didn't proof read this as well as I usually do. Also, please excuse the meeting at Kami House; that was a pain to write. I tried to make show Akira being torn about whether or not he should tell them he might be the killer. Its hard writing a character being all mixed up because I know (though I hadn't completely decided until just recently) whether or not he is. Oh well, I'm almost past the part where everyone just sits around moping, so the chapters should start flowing a little easierâmaybe

Donkeykong27: You probably had the right to feel gypped; it wasn't much of a chapter. Your review is one of the reasons this chapter came out so fast (that and I already felt bad about its length). I don't mind being told if I'm not living up to the standards my reviewers feel I should be achieving. A good kick in the ass never hurt anyone.

Phantom 1: I'm sorry to say this, but I like that it has you bouncing off the walls, it means I'm doing a decent job at putting suspense in. Unfortunately (if I do it right) you won't know what's going on for at least a couple more chapters (4 minimum). I'm glad you're enjoying it though.

Draco the Destroyer: I'm glad you liked the last chapterâI didn't, but I don't like many of them. They always seem better when I think them up at night, but for some reason they don't always come out the same when I type them up. Probably because I plan the next part of the story when I'm lying in bed and end up forgetting by the time I'm in front of the computer again.

Erica: Frieza huh? I don't knowâactually, I do know, but it's not him, sorry. I have been thinking about writing a story with Mirai Trunks, but I don't want to put much thought towards it until I'm done with this one. I learned my lesson during the Ammit Saga.

Toni the Mink: Sakura is kind of annoying, but in the later chapters she sort of grew on me (I think inner-Sakura is hilarious)âHinata's a better match for Naruto anyway. I haven't read Four Turtles and a Baby yet, but I'll check it out if you're going to be updating it.


	12. A Prince's Revenge

**Chapter Twelve: A Prince's Revenge**

o

King Kai was waxing his shinny, red car when someone tapped him on the shoulder. The North Kai turned around, expecting to see Bubbles or Gregory looking for dinner. He knew it wasn't Vegeta, because he was still on the other side of the house working on the Kaio-Ken technique, which he had claimed he would perfect far faster than Goku had. King Kai was definitely not expecting, nor wanting, to see the person who was standing behind him.

"Akira? Why are you here?" he demanded.

"I need answers and you're the only one left who can give them to me," the young man replied, ignoring the kai's tone of voice.

King Kai scowled, "I think maybe you should leave, I have nothing to say to you."

Akira looked confused for a moment and then realization dawned on his face. "You know, don't you? You know what's been happening on Earth."

King Kai's scowl deepened, "Of course I know! I'm the overseer for that quadrant of the galaxy and I've also been given a first hand account just recently..."

"Vegeta..."

"Yes, Vegeta. Now, once again, leave. You aren't welcome here anymore. You may be physically stronger than me, but don't think that's the only tool I have at my dispos—"

"What the fuck is he doing here?!?" a gruff and very familiar voice asked angrily behind them.

ooo

Pan flew back to Kami House on autopilot; in the past two days her life had been completely turned upside down. It was hard for her to believe that only yesterday her grandmother, Vegeta, and Bulma had all been alive; it had all happened so fast, but at the same time seemed to have been a lifetime ago. Back then the biggest thing on her mind had been fixing her relationship with Akira, now she had to deal with a murderer picking off her friends and family one at a time.

The mere mentioning of Akira seemed to instantly draw all of her attention away from her grief and sorrow over the murders and place it firmly on him. She knew it was because her brain just couldn't deal with everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours without driving her insane and so was latching onto the first thing that offered escape (or at least a less severe case of insanity); however, she couldn't help but feel guilty for not focusing more on her lost loved ones. She shook her head, trying to bring her attention elsewhere, but the thoughts of Akira, as well as the guilt over thinking about him, remained.

He'd been acting so odd for the last few weeks, avoiding her at all cost, lying to her to make her mad, telling her to stay away for 'her own good,' and then showing up out of the blue to comfort her when she needed it. He was driving her crazy, though not as crazy as the rest of the things happening to her, so she really couldn't complain too much.

Her mind replayed everything that had happened between the two of them since he'd started acting so weird all the way back to Kami House, trying to figure out what (if anything) she'd done to cause him to act like that. By the time the little island with the red-roofed house appeared on the horizon, she still hadn't figured out what was going on between the two of them, but at least she'd managed to keep her mind off of the grisly deaths she'd seen at the Lookout.

ooo

"Vegeta!" Akira exclaimed excitedly, "I didn't even think about you being here...but I guess I should have known." The sight of the man he'd come to view as something close to a father caused a wave of relief and joy to flow over him.

He smiled as he walked towards the Saiyan Prince; Vegeta did not smile, instead his scowl deepened. As Akira drew near, Vegeta pulled back his fist and delivered a vicious punch to the young man's face.

Akira was thrown into King Kai's car, shattering the passenger side window.

"Hey!" King Kai said angrily, "I just waxed that! If you're going to fight, could you keep it away from the car...and the house too, for that matter?"

Akira pulled himself to his feet and looked from the Vegeta to the Kai and back again, something was definitely wrong.

The Saiyan Prince smiled smugly, "You know, its funny how the fates work. Here I was thinking I'd have to go through all of eternity without ever getting a shot at revenge and now, only a day after my death, I already have my chance." He floated into the air and began quickly powering up, the little planet shook as Vegeta ascended to Super Saiyan three.

Akira watched in horror, knowing that there was only one reason Vegeta would attack him like this, but desperately trying to deny it to himself. As the older Saiyan's hair began to lengthen, Akira powered up just enough to be able to defend himself. He didn't want to fight Vegeta, but he also didn't want to be killed before he got some answers out of the angry Saiyan.

"Please Vegeta, can't we just talk? I...I don't know what happened on Earth...please just tell me what happened," the young man pleaded as his hair became golden.

"The time for talking between you and me has ended," the long haired Saiyan said in a voice filled with cold, merciless fury. He pointed at Akira and proclaimed, "You death is the only thing that will let me rest in peace."

The young man opened his mouth to try and calm Vegeta down, but instead had to hop to the side as Vegeta's fist slammed into the ground right where Akira had been standing a second ago. The enraged Saiyan turned to the younger man and rushed at him, fists flying. Akira nimbly dodged the attacks, all the while trying to talk some sense into his friend.

"Vegeta, plea"—he ducked his head as a kick sailed over it—"se stop doing thi"—another kick, another dodge—"s. I don't want to fi"—this time he had bend over backwards to avoid a ki blast—"ght you. Please just tell me what I"—finally Vegeta was too quick for him, landing a vicious uppercut into his stomach which doubled the young man over followed by a quick knee to the face that sent Akira high into the sky over the small planet.

Vegeta appeared above him just as Akira started to regain control of his flight. With a cry of rage the long haired Saiyan fired a powerful blast into the young man's back, sending him slamming into the ground so hard he seemed to almost crack the planet in two.

"Vegeta!" King Kai cried out as Akira hit the dirt. "I told you to take it easy on my planet. Do you have any idea the trouble I had to go through to get a new one after Goku took out my last one? These things don't grow on trees you know!"

The Saiyan Prince either didn't hear the objections or didn't care; just as Akira was pulling himself painfully to his feet, Vegeta landed right on top of him, driving the young man into the ground like a nail all the way up to his head.

Vegeta landed next to the head and smirked, "Hmmm, this certainly is familiar, isn't it? It's actually rather funny looking now that I'm not the one stuck in the ground. Now then, what was it you said to me? Ah yes...'the question is: should I kill you now...or should I play with you some more and use something that I've secured just for this fight?" The words sounded strangely and frighteningly familiar to the young man. Vegeta's smirked widened, "Well, like you said, it would be a shame not to do things the proper way, right?"

"What. Are. You. Talking about?!?!" Akira screamed as he powered up, widening the whole and throwing Vegeta away from him. He levitated himself into the air and then dropped down a short distance from where Vegeta was waiting for him.

"Why are you playing this game?" the Saiyan Prince snarled. "I don't remember you being this sick when I was alive, of course, there were a lot of things about you that I didn't know, right?...Murderer."

Akira's blood ran cold. Someone he trusted had finally said it, this time he couldn't argue that his accuser had been driven insane by the pain they were in or the horror that they'd witnessed. He was the one who did it; he was the guilty one all along.

"You mean...I did this to you? And to Bulma?" he asked quietly, hoping it was some sort of sick joke the other Saiyan was playing, but knowing it wasn't.

Vegeta nodded, "And now, it's payback time...Kaio-Ken!" The golden aura turned crimson as Vegeta's power shot through the roof, Akira was forced to step back and shield his eyes from the light show. When it was over, Vegeta was smiling again, "I don't have it quite right yet, Kakkarot and you certainly can do it better, but the power up should be enough to suit my purposes so long as I finish you quick."

Akira knew that if he powered up with his barrier on, he could still take the Saiyan Prince, though he'd probably have to go to at least level three to pull it off. But now that he'd heard the truth, he had no choice; he'd promised he would let justice be served and death at the hands of Vegeta would only begin to pay for the crimes he'd committed. He was about to power down and tell the older Saiyan to finish him, when he was belted across the face. Vegeta wasn't going to wait any longer; he was going to take his revenge now.

Akira's head bounced back and forth and the Saiyan Prince pummeled him mercilessly. Every instinct in the young man's body screamed for him to block the attacks or at least dodge them, but he forced his hands to stay at his sides, welcoming the guilt cleansing pain. In seconds, Akira's face was covered in blood, his nose was broken and his eyes were swelling shut, but still Vegeta continued to rain blows down upon him.

ooo

King Kai watched the fight in confusion, _'Why isn't Akira defending himself?'_ the short man wondered. It wasn't that he wasn't able to defend himself, he was intentionally taking very shot Vegeta threw; the Kai was well aware of how powerful the young man was, even without powering up much above where he was probably at, he should at least be able to avoid some of the attacks. Akira was a ruthless murderer and now, when confronted by someone who knew exactly what he was, the young Saiyan was acting confused and then refusing to fight back. It was almost as if he wanted Vegeta to kill him, but that just didn't make any sense...unless he hadn't been lying about not knowing.

ooo

A kick to Akira's chest laid him out flat on his back; he gingerly rolled over and then vomited blood on the ground before collapsing completely. He was pretty certain he could still power up and at least make a fight of it, but again, despite his instincts; he refused to let that power flow into him. Vegeta stood over him and glared down at the nearly unconscious fighter, the young man's blood was dripping off the Saiyan Prince's clenched fists.

"Why don't you fight back," he demanded. "Are you trying to deny me the honor of defeating you in a fair fight?" He reached down and grabbed Akira by his torn shirt and roughly pulled him to his knees; the young man's face was smeared with blood and dirt, his eyes were barely visible under the swelling, and his lip was split wide open. "Fight me!" the Saiyan Prince yelled as he kicked Akira away from him.

The younger fighter's body bounced along the ground and then crashed through the front door to King Kai's house. Vegeta powered up another ki blast and fired it, reducing the once pretty, dome-shaped house to ruble. King Kai yelled a protest, but a quick glare from the powerful Saiyan silenced him instantly.

Vegeta watched the ruins of the house carefully, fully expecting Akira to pop out of nowhere either with the instant transmission technique or with pure speed. However it was that the young man chose to come at him, he knew for certain that Akira would have moved before the blast hit, he wouldn't keep pretending to be innocent at the cost of his own life. Suddenly, the rubble shifted slightly and a bloodied and burned form slowly rose from the ashes of the house.

"Enough playing around Vegeta," Akira said in a barely audible voice.

The Saiyan Prince smirked, now he would see the real Akira.

"Finish me off," the young man stepped away from the rubble and dropped to his knees. "I won't defend myself, kill me now and end this madness."

Vegeta stared at him in wide-eyed shock. Whoever this person was, he was not Akira. Not the Akira that he'd trained for the past three years, nor the Akira that had so heartlessly ended Bulma's life.

The beautiful face of Bulma slipped into the Saiyan Prince's mind, it had only been a day and already he missed her more than he had thought possible. As image after image of his lovely wife passed before his eyes, he could feel himself powering down; and then the last image of her that he ever saw appeared, the sight of her blood covered body as a knife burst from her chest. A knife thrown by the young man kneeling before him now; Vegeta's face hardened and his golden aura erupted around him.

"Whatever game you're playing, it makes no difference to me, I'm not looking for an honorable victory over you, only for your death" he called out as he began to charge an attack in his hands, "I am the Prince of all Saiyans and I will not let you live to see another day. Final Flash!" Vegeta brought his hands forward and the huge attack blazed through the air, heading directly for the bowed Akira.

o

o

A/N: I'm glad that everyone seemed to enjoy that last chapter; hopefully you all liked this one just as much (I finally got to another fight scene!). Sorry about the cliff hanger, I get lots of reviews telling me that some of you are going crazy from the suspense and then I go and do this...oh well, I think you'll live, plus it was kind of a fun place to leave it. Anyway, thanks for all the reviews for all of these chapters, you guys totally make my day when I check my email and see one, two, or six review emails.

Anouk: Naruto isn't even on US TV (so far as I know), so I can only read the manga unless I want to drop a lot of money buying the dvds. I think I was hooked as soon as I saw Naruto defeat the most powerful ninja in his village with his "Sexy Ninjutsu" (funniest special technique I've ever seen)!

Toni the Mink: Thanks for pointing out my mistake on the name, I was writing it on a different computer than I normally use and I couldn't remember the correct spelling so I just guessed, I've gone back and corrected it now.

Draco the Destroyer: Yes, they might be those guys...maybe...

Donkeykong27: I'm glad you liked this chapter and thanks for pointing out the mistake, I fixed it.

Erica: I hope he's at least as good as Frieza (I kind of liked Frieza personally), but I guess only time will tell.

Rejhan: As you probably noticed, I skipped the Vegeta-King Kai talk where King Kai learns what's been happening on Earth. Looking back on it, I probably should have written it in during one of the previous chapters, but I really didn't want another section of people talking (this story has plenty of that as it is). I guess you can get the gist of what happened anyway given their initial reaction to Akira.


	13. Akira's Plea

**Chapter Thirteen: Akira's Plea**

o

Pan stopped at the door to Kami House and sighed, she didn't want to be the one to break the news to them. A part of her hoped that Akira had beaten her back and already explained everything, but deep down she knew that wasn't the case; she also knew that she couldn't turn around and leave, anyone who could sense ki already knew she was here. The young woman closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened the door and walked through.

She'd been gone for over an hour, but for the most part everyone was still just where they'd been when she left. The only exception was Valese who had returned to her seat, though Kumo was no where to be seen. A loud bang just above her head let her know that the little boy was taking a nap, or rather destroying a room while he was supposed to be taking a nap.

Pan smiled at the thought of the little boy having fun with no fear of the danger he and everyone else were in. _'I kind of wish I was that young again,'_ she thought as all eyes turned to face her.

"Well?" Gohan asked eagerly, "what did he say?"

"He's...they're..." Pan's mouth seemed incapable of forming the proper words, after stammering for a few seconds she closed her eyes and bowed her head. "They're dead..." she whispered.

Her words were greeted by a very long and very uncomfortable silence while everyone absorbed the gravity of the news.

"What happened?" Goten finally asked.

"Well, I met Akira at the Lookout and Mr. Popo was...he was dead...and then Akira said that all of them were...I went into the Palace and Dende had been murdered too...so were Yajirobe and Korin..."

"Then it's hopeless," Yamcha said quietly, "We can't sense this guy, he's stronger than us, and now anyone who dies can't ever come back."

"It's never hopeless," Gohan said forcefully. "We've been in tight spots before and we've always come through."

Goten nodded in agreement, "Yeah, as long as were still around, we have a chance."

A few in the room seemed cheered by the two Son boys' words of encouragement, but most still seemed glum as another moment of silence descended upon them.

"Why didn't Akira come back with you?" Gohan asked suddenly.

"I don't know, he left while I was in the Palace," Pan replied.

"How long was he there before you arrived," Trunks asked.

"Um, I don't know, a few minutes...maybe ten. Why does that matter?"

Trunks ignored her question. "Did he seem upset by all the deaths?"

"Of course he was; who wouldn't be?" Pan was growing confused.

Again Trunks ignored her question. "Did Akira go into the Palace?"

"No, he was just standing on the edge, he said everyone was dead...Just what are you trying to get at?" she asked in annoyance.

"Nothing," the lavender haired Saiyan replied evenly as he stood up and stalked out of the room.

Icalla waited for a moment and then hurried after him.

ooo

"Do you want to tell me why you were interrogating Pan?" Icalla asked when she found Trunks leaning against the back of the house, staring out to sea.

"It wasn't an interrogation...I was just trying to understand what happened at the Lookout," the Saiyan replied looking up at her.

"Unh-uh, you aren't getting away with that. There's something up with you and Akira; now, what is it?"

Trunks returned his gaze to the ocean once again and sighed, she knew him annoyingly well. "It's just that Akira's been...odd...lately. He's been keeping stuff from everyone. He randomly started spending almost all of his time training with dad, he was hardly sleeping at all, and...he lied about Namek. We found a survivor...he called Akira a...a murderer."

"What?" Icalla's mouth fell open.

"That's what he said...and maybe he didn't know what was going on, he was horribly injured, barely alive really, but Akira claimed he hadn't said anything...it was like he was trying to cover it up."

"Well," Icalla said thoughtfully, "he probably just didn't want an accusation like that hanging over his head. I mean he couldn't be the killer—"

"Couldn't he?" Trunks snapped, "With Instant Transmission he could get anywhere in the blink of an eye and get back before anyone noticed. He can hide his power and we couldn't sense the killer, plus he's the only one who could've beaten dad."

"Trunks..." the brown haired woman said quietly, "You can't really believe this. Akira is like a brother to you. He loves Vegeta and Bulma like they were his parents. He would never do something like that...he couldn't..."

The lavender haired Saiyan was silent for a long time and then he said, "I hope you're right...for all our sakes."

ooo

Vegeta watched his blast skim along the planet and then fly off into infinity. It was over, Akira was finished and Bulma was avenged. Suddenly he felt a presence appear behind him. The Saiyan Prince spun around to see King Kai with his hand on a still bowed Akira.

"What do you think you're doing?" the powerful Super Saiyan demanded.

"Calm down Vegeta, there might be more going on here than we realize. You can't kill anyone until I'm sure they've actually done something wrong," the Kai replied.

"'Actually done something wrong?' Haven't you been paying any attention? He KILLED Bulma! He murdered her and I'm going to get my revenge, I don't care what you have to say about it," Vegeta began to power up another ki blast.

"...Get out of the way King Kai..." Akira said without moving or looking up.

"But..."

"No, just leave me alone, I don't want your help; and I don't need you to save me."

Vegeta pointed his glowing hand at Akira, "Say hi to Freiza when you get to Hell." Just as he was about to fire the blast, his arm was slapped to the side, sending the beam off target. The Saiyan Prince turned and stared angrily at the tall green skinned man.

"Before you go blowing things up, perhaps we ought to hear what King Kai was to say," Piccolo said gruffly, returning Vegeta's stare with equal intensity. "Akira doesn't seem to be going anywhere and your revenge will be just as enjoyable in a few minutes."

"Perhaps I ought to kill you all and enjoy my revenge now," the Saiyan Prince spat.

"That's not the sort of person you are anymore," Piccolo smirked, "Your time with Bulma softened you more than you realize."

Vegeta's hands clenched into fists as the shook with rage, but he did not attack. "Fine, whatever, just make it quick," he growled.

King Kai turned to Akira who still had not looked up or even acknowledged what was happening around him. "Akira, what do you actually know about the murders?" the kai asked.

The young man didn't respond.

"Akira, we can't help you unless you tell us what's really been going on," Piccolo said still watching Vegeta.

"I don't want your help," the young Saiyan said in a quiet voice. "If you wanted to help me, you'd let Vegeta finish me off."

"I couldn't agree more," the Saiyan Prince called out.

"Look Akira, I don't think that you are really doing this, or, if you are actually doing it, you aren't in control of yourself when it's happening," King Kai tried to explain.

The young man wiped away the blood and dirt that covered his face and glared at the kai. "I did it," he said forcefully, "I've been dreaming about killing every singe one of them for weeks, sometimes I couldn't tell when the dream ended and reality began. Yesterday the dreams came true and if you don't let Vegeta end this now, I'll probably kill again and again until every single member of the Z Fighters is up here." King Kai and Piccolo looked at him in shock as Akira continued, "Now, unless that's what you want to see happen, get out of the way and let Vegeta kill me." He looked the Saiyan Prince in the eyes and said, "Let's get this over with."

Vegeta smirked and brought his hand up, a ball of ki forming in his palm. A second passed, and then two, and then the proud Prince closed his eyes and once again lowered his hand. "I won't kill you until I'm sure that you are the one who's really doing this...if you were being controlled my vengeance won't be satisfied."

The young man leapt to his feet, "I did it! I murdered you, Bulma, Chi-chi, all of the Nameks, even everyone at the Lookout! How can you not kill me?!?" A lopsided smile formed on his cracked lips, "I knew what I was doing too. It was fun watching your face when Bulma died and if you let me go, I'll get to see Trunks' face when Bra dies and then I'll kill him just like I killed you."

Vegeta shook with rage as his power level began to grow; he stared hard at the last living pure blooded Saiyan and then asked through clenched teeth, "How do you know about the Arleans?"

Akira blinked in confusion, "The Arleans?" The name sounded familiar, but he couldn't think of where he'd heard it.

The Saiyan Prince powered down completely, his hair becoming shorter and black, sticking straight up as it normally did. "You aren't a good enough liar to claim sole responsiblity for these murders. If you had actually done it, you would have known who I was talking about. Whoever killed me certainly did."

Akira couldn't believe what was happening, his friends couldn't possibly be this stupid, they wouldn't just let him run around knowing what he was. "What do I do then? How do I keep everyone safe when I'm the one that's been doing all this?" There was a moment of silence while the three dead beings struggled to come up with a solution.

Piccolo was the first to speak up, "I'm afraid you're going to have to work that out on your own."

"What?!?"

Vegeta responded for the Namek, "You know what's happening now, you know that you're being used. I know a little about having someone in my head and what you have to do is refuse to bow to another's will."

Akira was desperate now, "Please, you can't do this...you can't just let me go..."

"Have some pride boy! Are you a Saiyan or aren't you? No true Saiyan will knowingly allow himself to be completely controlled."

The young man looked around him in bewilderment, "That's your advice? Have pride? You're letting me go back to Earth where I've already killed at least seven people, plus everyone on New Namek, and the only thing you can say to me is 'have some pride' and don't let anyone control me?"

"It isn't as simple as you think," King Kai said, "If you're inocent, even if it's just because you're being controlled when you commit the crimes, we aren't allowed to interfere. The kais are here to watch over the universe and train any warriors that come to us, we can't mess with the natural flow of the living world."

Akira's swollen face hardened, "Fine. If you won't do anything, I'll just go find someone who will." His fingers started to move to his forehead, but Piccolo grabbed his arm before he could use the Instant Transmission.

"Before you go and throw your life away, I want you to think about something," the Namek warrior said. "If you aren't the one who's done this, and you don't really know that you are, none of the others could fight against this enemy. You would be the only one capable of keeping everyone safe."

"But--"

"No! Akira, dreams are not reality. You may have dreamed of killing these people, but you haven't ever been awake when it happened, have you? Have you ever woken up and not been where you fell asleep? Have you ever had injuries that you couldn't explain?"

Akira started to try to object, but as he thought about it, none of what Piccolo had said had ever happened to him.

"You see? You don't actually know that you killed anyone. Getting yourself killed might only sentence the others to death, think about that before you do what you're planning."

The young man nodded slowly, lost in thought, and then a second later he was gone.

o

o

A/N: Okay, I'll admit that the reasoning behind them letting Akira go is kind of weak...the problem was that Akira needed to find someone that could tell him one way or another if he was the killer, but at the same time, he couldn't be out of commission for the rest of the story. So, yeah, King Kai, Vegeta, and Piccolo are all kind of idiots...sorry, it couldn't be helped. I hope you all liked the rest of the chapter.


	14. Accusation

**Chapter Fourteen: Accusation**

o

Trunks and Icalla stood in the shade of Kami House, staring out to sea in silence; the gravity of Trunks words had settled over them like a blanket and neither could think of anything else to say. After several minutes, they turned to head inside. Suddenly, something caught the lavender haired Saiyan's eye; he turned in surprise to see the back of a familiar, spiky-haired young man. Akira took a step a way from them as light blue aura formed around him while he prepared to take to the air.

"Akira," Trunks called out, the younger Saiyan paused, but did not turn to face them as his aura faded. "Where have you been?"

"Around," came the quiet reply.

The lavender haired Saiyan's eyes narrowed as he noticed that Akira's clothes where torn in a several places, exposing cuts and burns on his back. "What happened to you?" he asked.

The young man still did not turn around. "Nothing," he said evenly and his aura again flashed around him. Trunks shot forward and grabbed Akira's arm, roughly spinning him around.

Icalla let out a small scream and Trunks found his breath taken away by the sight. The young man's face was covered in deep, bloody gashes, his eyes were black and blue and nearly swollen shut, and his lip was split open; his nose was bent at an unnatural angle and crimson blood was dripping off his chin. His shirt was almost nonexistent on his chest, which was covered in burns and cuts.

"Let go of me," Akira growled.

"What happened? How did you get these injuries?" Trunks demanded.

"Trunks. Let. Me. Go." the young man said dangerously.

"Not until you tell me where you went and why you're so beat up," the older Saiyan shouted. He pulled Akira closer to him and stared at him hard, "I know you've been hiding things from us. Now tell me what you've been up to!"

Akira ripped his arm free and slammed his fist into Trunks' chest.

ooo

"Gohan, this can't possibly be the best idea," Goten said as the arguing died down for a couple of minutes. The rest of the Z-Fighters had gone back to discussing their options after the shock of Trunks and Icalla's sudden departure had worn off. Despite many suggestions, no one seemed able to come up with a better plan than Akira's, though none of them liked the idea of leaving their families without much protection.

"I wish we had something better, but I can't think of anything," the Saiyan scholar told his brother. "At least until we know more about who we're dealing with and what sort of abilities they have, this is the most logical plan."

Tien shook his head, "I still think we sho--"

CRASH!

Trunks smashed through the outer wall and landed in the middle of the living room; the rest of the fighters instantly powered up, fearing an attack.

"You can all relax, it's just me," Akira said as he stepped through the hole in the wall.

"Akira you're ba--" Pan's voice died on her lips as the young man's face came into view. "Oh Kami! What happened?"

The battered Saiyan ignored her, instead focusing all of his attention on Gohan. "I'll be there when you bury Vegeta, Bulma, and Chi-chi; but other than that, you won't see me unless one of you powers up to fight. Please don't waste your energy trying to find me," he said and then turned on his heels and started to climb out the hole. Just before he was out of sight he paused and glanced over his shoulder, "Don't forget, Kumo and Bra must stay with the fighters or they'll give the others away."

"Wait!" Pan called out. When Akira didn't stop a second time she ran after him, Gohan tried to grab her arm, but she slipped away from him and headed through the hole.

Akira was beginning to rise into the air when Pan's hand latched on to his ankle and pulled him back down. He crossed his arms and gave her his best Vegeta-glare as his feet hit the ground.

The young woman refused to back down though. "Why are you leaving? Why won't you stay with us?" she asked.

Akira's eyes remained cold. "I have other things that I need to do."

Pan stared at him in silence for a long time; she couldn't understand what it was that he was going through or why he wouldn't let her help him. Finally she asked, "Did I do something to you? Is that why you've been acting like this the last couple of days?"

"You didn't do anything, there's just...things are , for me right now."

"What? What's going on? Why won't you tell me?" she demanded.

Akira's face softened slightly as he bowed his head and closed his eyes; he took a deep breath and opened his mouth to tell her everything, but the words refused to pass his lips.

"Do you have any idea what you've been doing to me this last week? You've been jerking me around since the baseball game...you act like you hate me, you tell me to stay away, you appear out of nowhere to comfort me, then you say you're leaving and won't be coming back! I never know what's going to happen when I see you, am I going to get the man I love or the bastard that's been messing with my head?" she paused and tried to push down her rising anger. "Yesterday you said you still loved me...did you even mean it?"

Akira pulled her close and pressed his lips to hers in a tender kiss that he hoped told her just how true his love was. At first she was stiff in his arms and then she slowly melted and kissed him back. A minute later he pulled back and gave her a lopsided smile, all of the exhaustion and pain that had been in his eyes for the last few days seemed to fall away as he whispered, "Never doubt my feelings for you. No matter what happens, know that I love you. And know that I am only trying to do what needs to be done to keep everyone safe."

Pan nodded, a small smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. "I love you too, I would do anything for you...you know that don't you?

The young man's face became troubled, "Anything?" he asked.

She nodded again.

"Then here's what I want you to do," he took another deep breath, knowing that he'd royally screwed himself by giving into his emotions and kissing her, "after Vegeta and the others are laid to rest, if you ever see me when you aren't fighting whatever it is that's attacking us, I want you to kill me on the spot without hesitation."

Pan's mouth fell open. "W, what?" she stammered.

"If I'm not coming to help you guys, you have to kill me."

"No," she said firmly, "no, I won't promise that. Why would you ask me to do that?"

Akira's eyes became hard again, "I can't explain right now, but you have to promise me that you'll do it...at least until we've beat this thing."

Pan put her hands on her hips and scowled, he was messing with her head again, "No. I'm not going to do that, nor will I make that promise, unless you give me a damn good reason."

"If you love me, you'll do what I ask," Akira said, his tail slipping from around his waist and swishing back and forth in agitation.

"If I love you I'll kill you? You aren't making any sense!" Pan screamed.

The young man stared at her for a moment and then turned away a rose into the air. "You won't promise...but hopefully you won't forget what I asked...take care of yourself Pan," with that said he shot off into the sky and vanished into the clouds.

Tears trickled down Pan's face as she watched him go, her thoughts and feelings were too jumbled and confused to make any sense. After all that had happened the last two days, she didn't have many tears left to shed; a few minutes later, when she was done crying, the demi-Saiyan turned and headed back inside.

ooo

Trunks hadn't been hurt by Akira's attack, but he felt it made his suspicions even more plausible. While Pan and Akira were standing outside talking, he sat on the couch, ignoring the questioning glances sent his way and brewing over the situation. His eyes frequently darted in the direction of the hole his entrance had made, half expecting to feel Akira attack Pan next.

A few minutes later the young woman returned looking perfectly healthy, though her eyes were red and slightly puffy. She sat down next to her father and stared at the floor. Once again the room became uncomfortable as hundreds of unspoken questions seemed to hang over them.

Finally Trunks couldn't stand it any longer, "Well?" he demanded, "what did he say to you?"

"Nothing," Pan mumbled.

"Nothing, huh?" the lavender haired Saiyan smirked, "that 'nothing' sure took a long time."

The young woman glared at him, "What does it matter what he said to me? We have a murderer on our hands and you're worried about a private conversation between me and my boyfriend?"

"You want to know why?" Trunks' eyes narrowed, "It matters because Akira might be that murderer."

There was a collective gasp from everyone in the room.

Pan's anger burned as she became a Super Saiyan. "You're wrong," she growled forcefully.

"Am I?" the older Saiyan asked as he crossed his arms, "Does anyone know where he was when dad was killed, or Chi-chi? The guy looks like he hasn't slept in a month. I've seen the way he's been acting this last week, he's not acting normal. And..." he paused and looked around the room, "I'm not the first one to accuse him. We found a Namek in the village we visited and he called Akira a murderer too."

"He wouldn't do that," Pan said, but not nearly as forcefully.

"How do you know?" Trunks shot back. "He has all the abilities and the strength to pull it off."

Pan didn't have an answer, though her heart was screaming that it was impossible, a larger part of her than she'd like to admit thought Trunks had a point.

"Trunks," Gohan said quietly, "that's unfair. You can't just accuse someone when they aren't around to defend themselves, especially when all you have is circumstantial evidence. This is not the time for us to be fighting amongst ourselves, we have to work together to get this guy."

"And if 'the guy' is one of us? What do we do then?" Trunks spat.

"I know you're grieving, we all are, but look at this logically," Gohan replied calmly, "Has Akira ever shown a hint of being capable of something like this? These murders have been sadistically carried out; someone is enjoying him/herself when they kill. With the exception of his first Super Saiyan transformation and the battles with Ammit and his men, Akira has never hurt a soul, nor acted like he would like to."

The words cut into Pan as the memory of Akira's face when she found him in the woods flashed through her mind. She tried to shake the thought away, but it refused to leave her.

Trunks scowled and swore under his breath, but did not argue with Gohan's logic.

Seeing that a temporary peace had been established, Gohan smiled and said, "I think the best thing to do is put our plan into action as soon as possible. There've been a lot of killings in the two days, and while I think we all need sometime to grieve, we also need to make sure everyone is safe."

The rest of the Z-Fighters nodded solemnly and began working out the details. By the end of the night, they had found a large island for the warriors to stay and a spot in Parsley Town, located a few miles north of West Capital, for the non-ki using members of their families. They decided that they would move into their temporary new homes after they buried Vegeta, Bulma, and Chi-chi the following afternoon.

That night, the little house was uncomfortably full of sleeping bags as everyone tried to get as much sleep as possible, knowing they had a busy and painful day ahead of them.

ooo

Akira looked at the mountainous Yunzabit Heights and sighed; it was going to be home for a while, whether he liked it or not. It was bleak and cold, but it was also far away from everyone and everything that he might pose a threat to. He wished there was a way for him to forget the Instant Transmission technique, it would still allow him to be with the rest of the Z-Fighters in an instant, but getting a way was better than nothing.

The young man shivered as he pulled a jacket that he had picked up at his dorm on his way to the Heights out of a bag and put it on. Once he was a little more protected from the elements, he gathered what wood he could find for a fire and lit it with a small ki blast. Turning his back to the fire and ignoring the growling of his stomach, Akira sat down, floated into the air, and began to meditate; determined to sleep as little as possible until he was sure his friends were safe.

ooo

"Are you sure you did the right thing?" Vegeta asked, taking his hand off of King Kai's shoulder.

"Honestly? No," the aqua skinned kai replied.

"Why didn't you read his mind and make sure he wasn't the killer?" Piccolo asked as he also removed his hand.

King Kai shrugged, "If he's being controlled by someone else, his mind wouldn't have any memories of the killings anyway. The only way it would have been worthwhile is if he wasn't being controlled, but was still the killer...and I don't think that's what's happening."

Vegeta shook his head, "Maybe I should have just killed him when I had the chance."

The kai focused on Earth once again as he quietly said, "Only time will tell..."

o

o

A/N: The next several chapters are going to be a lot less Akira centered than this story has been so far. I've been thinking for a while that I've focused on him a lot more than I'd originally planned, but his role thus far has been really important in setting up everything that's going to happen. Obviously he's going to still be a key character in upcoming events, but for now he's going to be as far in the background as he can go.

Wow, over a hundred reviews already, that's a lot faster than it was for my first story! Thank you all so much, you really inspire me to keep working on this story even when my Naruto addiction comes calling!

Toni the Mink: I can see what you mean, but what I was referring to was the fact that Akira was the only one stronger than Vegeta and if Vegeta could be killed with relative ease, the others aren't going to stand much of a chance without some serious increase of power. However, you don't need to worry about me making a Mary-Sue, Akira is beatable (I might even kill him if the mood strikes me, but I haven't gotten that far along), he's just the strongest of the remaining fighters.

Nadz: I'm glad you liked seeing Piccolo, I kind of missed writing about him, he's one of my favorite characters from DBZ, and I was really pissed when he was still stuck in hell at the end of GT. I'd like to have at least a couple more Piccolo scenes, but now that he's dead on a pretty permanent basis it's hard to give people reasons to go see him.

Draco the Destroyer: I hope you liked the reason for King Kai not looking in Akira's head, I actually thought of it for the last chapter, but then decided that it wasn't that important. After your review I realized that there needed to be at least a little explanation. I'm doing my best to keep everyone in the dark (including Akira...or so it seems) until at least the midway point of the story. Kind of like the last story there will be a definite half way point (last time it was Akira's death...maybe I'll use the same thing for the break in this one), when I get there, you'll have some answers.

Phantom 1: I'm glad you thought it was logical, I tried, but was worried that his 'escape' was too forced. Overall, everyone seemed okay with it, so I guess I did a decent job. As for killing everyone off and just ending it...well, I don't think I could live with such a bitter sweet (or down right sad) ending, plus, as you found out, people would kill me! At the same time, it would be kind of an unexpected thing to do.

Ladybugg: Vegeta's probably thinking the same thing after Akira put his son through a wall. I'll tell you this, now that Akira's back (but maybe not because he's back) there will be more murders.

Donkeykong27: It was really hard, this one was easier thankfully.

Rejhan: I'm glad you liked it. The whole Arlean-thing was the only thing I could think of to keep Vegeta from killing Akira (though he may be getting another shot later...).

Legend: Thanks! When I read your review I was really tired and my eyes were playing tricks on me, I thought you wrote 'this story sucks.' It took me a second to realize I'd read it wrong. I liked what you wrote a lot better when I read it a second time!

Mystins: I think, like Kind Kai said in this chapter, only time will tell if they were brain damaged or not. I must say that I agree with you their reasoning was lacking in the intelligence department, but Akira can't get killed off just yet (if ever)...


	15. The Butcher

**Chapter Fifteen: The Butcher**

o

Kumo watched his father very carefully as Goten walked to the bottom of a tree full of ripe apples and easily floated into the air to pick a few. The little boy's face scrunched up as he put all the concentration a nearly three year old could muster into flying the way his father had; the toddler bent his knees and jumped, getting about four feet into the air before falling to the ground again and landing on his diaper-padded butt. Kumo stuck out his lower lip and looked around, he didn't see anyone watching him so instead of crying he decided to try to mimic his father some more.

Bra smiled sadly from across the lawn at the antics of the little boy. Her mother would have had a good laugh at Kumo's flying attempts. The young woman closed her eyes against the tears that were once again threatening bubble up; after two weeks the others seemed to have moved on, probably because they had something they could focus on: finding the killer.

Everyone else on the island seemed to be in relatively good cheer, all things considered, Bra was alone in her misery; not a fighter, not a cook, not even a great scientist, she was useless in this situation. The only reason she wasn't with the other women was that her natural power level was high enough to make her stand out and draw attention from anyone ki sensitive. The princess of the Saiyan race had become a liability, her father would be furious. He had tried to get her to train for most of her life, but she'd never had any desire to do so. She was her mother's daughter in ever sense of the word, she'd rather think her way around a problem than crush it with her hands; because of it she was stuck on the island crying or babysitting Kumo when the others went out and hunted for her parents' killers.

Despite her effort to keep them down, a trickle of tears began to run down her cheeks. Just as she was about to let herself sink back into her depression, a hand gently touched her shoulder.

"Are you alright?" Uubu asked softly.

Bra gave an almost unnoticeable nod and tried to hide her tears.

The tan skinned man frowned, "No, of course you aren't...I, I'm sorry, I guess that was a dumb question."

"It's okay," Bra whispered, "I just...miss them, you know?"

Uubu sat down next to her, "Don't worry, you'll see them again."

The demi Saiyan let a hint of a smile appear on her lips, "Do you really think so," she asked.

"Absolutely, as soon as we get rid of the guy that...did this, we'll figure out some way to bring them back."

Bra wiped her tears away and beamed at the young man, "Thanks Uubu, you're really sweet."

Uubu's cheeks turned pink and he suddenly looked a little nervous, "I, uh...thanks. Um, you too...Well, I need to get going, I'll see you later."

The Saiyan Princess giggled as the Mystical One fled the scene.

ooo

Pan dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as she watched a handsome man on the TV professed his eternal love to a woman who was viewed by the rest of the town has plain looking and nerdy. The demi Saiyan was glad everyone else was else where at the moment, she hated looking weak in front of them. Despite all her efforts she was still a sucker for the clichéd romantic comedies, a hold over from her years of feeling undesirable to the opposite sex in middle and high school. These movies had always given her hope that one day she would find a man who could look past the outside and see her inner beauty. Even though she had finally found such a man (despite the current hiatus their relationship was in) she still couldn't control herself enough to make it through one of those movies without getting a little choked up.

Just as the new couple embraced to share their first kiss, the screen flickered and a man in a suit, Chuck Huber according to the caption, appeared with the words, "Breaking News" scrolling along the bottom of the picture.

"We interrupt this program to give you this breaking news: Police believe that the serial killer known as 'The Butcher' has struck again, this time killing two young women a few blocks from the night club they worked at. It has been nearly fifteen days since the last murder credited to him occurred in Satan City, now it appears that he has moved on to South Capital. With more on this we go to Itou Miki, who is on the scene. Itou, what are police saying?"

A beautiful blond woman holding a large microphone appeared on the screen. "Well, Chuck, the officer I spoke to said that they were 99 sure it was the same killer who terrorized Satan City a few weeks ago. If there are any children in the room, we recommend they leave now, the following images are definitely not suitable for our younger viewers."

Pan didn't think the images that were shown were suitable for any viewer. An entire alleyway was covered in blood as two horribly mutilated corpses were removed from the scene on stretchers. Thankfully plastic sheets covered the bodies, but neither bundles on the stretchers seemed to have enough mass to make up a full human body Pan thought, then she saw two very pale looking officers carrying large buckets to the ambulance. There was little doubt where the rest of the bodies were being held.

"Do the police have any information they can give our viewers, any leads that are being followed up?" the anchor man asked, his face also seemed to have lost some of its color.

"Strangely no, this case continues to baffle the investigators. The officer I spoke with said these murders have had almost no evidence and the few things that have been found have been no help what-so-ever. The only clue the police have found at this site was written on the wall in the blood of one or both of these young women."

The camera panned over to the wall of the alley. The crimson writing stood out against the white paint of the building, Pan's blood ran cold as she saw it.

"Dad! You better get in here!"

Gohan ran into the rooms, followed by Goten, Trunks, Uubu, and the rest of the members of the house. They all stared at the TV in disbelief.

"Vegeta Needs Company" was written on the wall. As the camera panned back, it became obvious that no normal man could have written such a thing, the horrible graffiti was painted half way up the tall building; no ladder would have reached such a height.

"The police have released pictures of the two victims; they are Tiffany Vollmer age 19 and Laara Sadig age 21." A picture of each of the women appeared on the screen, there was a loud intake of breath from everyone in the room. The first girl, Tiffany, had aqua hair and bore a striking resemblance to Bra; the second, Laara, had shoulder length black hair and bangs.

"It's him, isn't it?" Goten asked in a hushed voice, "He's sending a message to us."

"I don't see what else it could be," Trunks answered, the muscles in his jaw flexed as he continued to watch the report.

"We have to do something!" Pan exclaimed loudly. "That bastard is killing defenseless people, we can't just sit here."

"He wants us to come out, he's trying to lure us out into the open," Gohan replied.

"So!" yelled Pan, her blood boiling, "I don't care if it's what he wants, we can't let people suffer while we hide! We need to go out and find this guy."

Gohan placed a hand on her shoulder, "We aren't going to keep hiding, we're going to South Capital, but everyone needs to understand that this is probably some sort of trap. We need to be very careful here."

"Okay, so we know it's a trap, but what do we do about it?" Yamcha asked.

"Well," Gohan said, "first of all, we need some people to stay here with Bra, Kumo, and Master Roshi. After that, we'll head into town and see what we can find. Everyone will need to keep their power levels suppress while we search, that way we'll know if anyone gets attacked."

This didn't seem like much of a plan to Pan, but she nodded and went with it, eager to get out of the house and find the person who'd turned her life upside down. Krillin and Chiaotzu quickly volunteered to stay, saying they wouldn't be much good if the killer were found anyway; then, to the surprise of everyone, Uubu said that he would stick around to. Pan couldn't be sure, but she thought she might have seen the mohawked fighter glance out of the corner of his eye at Bra when he said he would stay. Once that was decided, the departing fighters headed outside and flew to South Capital.

ooo

A little over an hour later Pan's dark haired was waving in the warm breeze as she peered over the edge of the building she had landed on. Below her, the police were still working on the crime scene; almost an entire city block had been shutdown to keep curious drivers and pedestrians away while investigators searched for clues and cleaned up the massive amounts of blood in the alley. Given the way the officers were moving and acting, they didn't have a chance of finding anything useful, most had run at least once to a trashcan to throw up and the rest just seemed to have an overwhelmed look on their faces.

The young woman's stomach churned in disgust, the television report hadn't done this crime justice. Whoever had done this was one sick bastard.

The demi Saiyan began to scan the crowds that had gathered at the police barricade, wondering if her grandmother's murderer was somewhere amongst the curious onlookers.

ooo

Bra walked outside, sat down on the grass and looked up at the clouds as she tried to relax her nerves; urgently praying that Trunks and the others would be okay while they searched for the person who had killed her parents and Chi-chi. She was so focused on the clouds and the situation in South Capital that she didn't hear or see the person closing in behind her.

ooo

Gohan was on the other side of the block, also watching the crowds of people trying to get closer to the murder site; he had read that criminals often return to the scene of the crime to enjoy their handiwork or take pleasure in the knowledge that the police didn't know how close they were to the perpetrator. He knew that the killer could use ki and also suppress his ki to the point that it was undetectable even if he was powered up.

_'Just like Akira,'_ he thought with an uneasy feeling.

Unfortunately, that skill meant that searching for the murderer was completely pointless, but it was better than doing nothing at all.

Suddenly, Gohan's eye caught something that just seemed a little off. A man in the crowd was wearing a coat with the hood pulled up, standing out in stark contrast from the people around him who were all wearing summer clothing.

The man walked along the sidewalk right underneath the building the Saiyan was standing on, and then he stopped and looked up at Gohan. The oddly dressed man's sunglasses glittered in the sun as he smirked and gave a small wave.

_'It's him!'_ Gohan thought excitedly. Just as he was about to power up and go after him, a large pedestrian passed between the two, blocking Gohan's line of sight. When the large man passed, the murderer was gone. The Saiyan scoured the area, searching frantically for someone in a coat, but the man was gone.

Gohan's mind was racing. The killer had looked right at him, had simply toyed with him. He had known exactly where Gohan was, while Gohan only saw him because of his clothing. That was the most frightening thing to the Saiyan, the killer simply hadn't cared that Gohan was watching him; in fact, he'd allowed himself to be seen, apparently completely unafraid of the oldest living Saiyan.

ooo

Uubu was just stepping through the doors to the house when he heard Bra's loud scream; the Mystical One's power began to rise, until he saw the small streak that was Kumo running towards the woods and away from an irate Bra who looked like she had just had a large cup of water dumped on her. The young man couldn't help but laugh as he moved to head off the speedy toddler.

Kumo had just entered the woods with Bra closing in fast when he was suddenly pulled out of sight by Uubu.

"Shhhh," the powerful warrior whispered to the squirmy child, "Miss Bra's going to find you if you aren't quiet."

The little boy stopped moving and giggled as he saw Bra run past their hiding spot; he glanced up at Uubu and gave him a big smile, Uubu returned the smile as they slowly crept out from under the bush and began quietly making their way back to the house.

When they were a safe distance from the raging Saiyan, Uubu turned to the toddler and said, "You need to be extra nice to Miss Bra, okay? Otherwise she's going to be really mad at both of us when she finds us."

Kumo's eyes twinkled mischievously as he said, "o-K-ay," putting all of the emphasis on the recently learned 'k' sound. Then he ran into the house to see what one of his favorite people, Master Roshi, was up to.

Uubu sat down on the grass and waited for Bra to get back, hoping she wouldn't be too mad at him for saving the little boy's life. After a few minutes of waiting, he decided it might be better if he went and found her so he could explain everything before she got her hands on the toddler.

ooo

"Did you see anything?" Tien asked the long haired man walking towards him.

"Nah, this is pointless," Yamcha replied, "If we can't feel this guy, we're never going to find him in a city this big." The two stood in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, watching the people walking around them.

The tree eyed warrior nodded, "Yeah...Did you see the alley?"

"Unfortunately, this guy is sick. I didn't even know two people had that much blood in them."

"The police seemed pretty baffled, though I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing, I'd hate to see the blood bath if they caught up with anyone that could beat Vegeta," Tien said. "Shall we go see how Gohan's doing?"

"Might as well, we're not getting anythi--" Yamcha turned his head as someone tapped him on the shoulder, but no one was there. "Hey, don't mess around like that!"

"Like what?"

"You tapped me on the shoulder!"

All three eyes rolled, "No, I didn't; I've been standing right here. You were looking at me."

Yamcha turned and looked behind him again, feeling slightly creeped out, "Are you sure?"

Tien noticed something on his friend's back, "Hey, what's this?" He pulled a piece of paper away from Yamcha's shirt and opened it.

_'Beware Allying with the Saiyans'_

The two warriors read the note together, looked at each other and then hurried to find their friends.

ooo

Goten had been searching the city for over an hour when he finally got bored and headed toward the nearest life force he could sense. The demi Saiyan smiled as he saw his lavender haired friend, he quickly dropped out of the sky and landed next to Trunks on top of a tall office building.

"Anything?" Trunks asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Nope, you?"

"Nothing."

"Well, I guess we should have known this wasn't going to work, but it was worth a shot," Goten replied, sitting down on the edge of the building. The two sat in silence for a moment and then Goten asked the question that he'd been avoiding for over two weeks, "Do you really think Akira is the killer?"

Trunks sat down next to his friend and sighed, "I don't know...I mean, he HAS been acting really weird, and he DOES have all of the abilities to pull it off...but...I don't know. Maybe Gohan was right, maybe I was just looking for someone to blame..."

"What about Namek?" the dark haired Saiyan asked.

Trunks frowned, he'd been mulling over that memory since he'd first accused Akira. He was pretty sure of what he'd heard, but not as sure as he'd once been. Also Akira keeping that piece of information to him self wasn't necessarily an incriminating action; anyone would be afraid of having blame cast on them if they heard that sort of accusation from a mad man. In fact, Trunks wasn't sure that he wouldn't have done the same thing himself if their situations were reversed.

"I...I may have jumped to conclusions," he admitted, "I mean, just because he didn't tell us about what the last Namek said doesn't mean he's guilty, he might have just been scared...of being accused the way I accused him."

"Well, if he didn't do it, I'm sure he'll understand," Goten said, gently placing a hand on his childhood friend's shoulder. "Everyone was hurting that day, I'm sure a lot of things were said that shouldn't have been."

"But he was the only one who got called a murderer..."

"Akira's a good guy, he'll forgive you," the dark haired Saiyan replied.

Trunks smiled sadly, "If we ever see him again...Speaking of which, how's Pan been holding up? She's not exactly talking to me lately."

"I don't know, she seems sad I guess," Goten thought about it for a moment and then added, "I think they were having issues before...you know...everything started. She called me looking for him about a month ago; I guess he'd just stopped seeing her...more of his weird behavior."

"You don't think they're...you know, having...sex."

Goten blanched, "Ugh, I hope not. They're just kids..."

"They're twenty," Trunks reminded his friend, "Well, I suppose you could argue that Akira's more like four, but he looks and acts like he's twenty. Plus, they have been dating for three years."

"But Pan wouldn't...and Akira's not like...never mind, let's just never discuss this ever again."

The lavender haired Saiyan almost laughed, "Yeah, that's probably a good idea, best to just assume that little Panny is staying perfect and pure."

"Well, if she isn't, Akira better just stay gone. If Gohan ever found out, he'd kick Akira's ass no matter how strong the kid gets," Goten said. The two chuckled at the thought until they felt the other Z Fighters begin moving towards each other; then the Saiyans, jumped off the building and flew in the direction that the others were headed.

ooo

"Kuuummmo!" Bra called out as she continued to search the forest, she had gotten over her anger over the ice cold water that had been dumped on her and had grown worried that the little boy might have gotten lost. "I'm not mad, just come out!"

Suddenly she stopped and looked over her shoulder, she was certain she'd heard leaves crunching just behind her, but there was no one there now. After a moment of staring at the trees she began walking and calling for the little boy again.

A few minutes later a dark shape shot between two trees a short distance in front of her. The Saiyan blinked, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her, but then, out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw the same thing.

"Kumo?" she asked quietly. "Uh, is that you?" A twig snapped behind her and she whirled around, but once again there was nothing there.

"Kumo if that's you, this isn't funny!" the young woman's heart was beginning to beat faster as her eyes scanned the area in front of her, desperately hoping to see the little toddler and not...something else.

Kumo? Seriously, if that's you, just come out and we'll go back to the house and annoy Master Roshi," there was no response. Bra wished that she had worked harder at learning how to sense power levels, she could usually feel a person if she could see them, but it was harder to lock on when she didn't know what to look for. "Kumo?" she asked meekly.

A strong hand covered her mouth, muffling her scream.

o

o

A/N: Well, a cliff hanger and also a fairly long chapter and not a single scene with Akira (can you beat that?)! It was actually kind of nice to break from the whole 'Akira-is-messed-up-but-is-he-really-the-killer?' thing. The only part about this chapter that I didn't like were the scenes with Uubu and Bra, I don't really know a lot about either character; I didn't see all of GT so I missed most of Uubu's character development and I never saw a single episode with Bra in it. Any of you who know something about those characters, feel free to let me know if I screwed them up at all. Oh and also please excuse any poor grammar or spelling, I ran spell check, but didn't really go through and proof read it. Thanks for all the reviews for the last chapter!

Toni the Mink: The Yunzabit Heights are actually were Piccolo/Kami first landed on earth and where his spaceship remains until Bulma fixes it. I seem to recall it also being the place that young Piccolo grows up after Goku defeats Demon Lord Piccolo, but I don't remember if that's true or not.

Nadz: There wasn't much of a setup to the question, but there was a reason for Vegeta mentioning the Alreans. The last thing that was said before Vegeta was killed was "for Arlea." Therefore the murderer knew about them and also Vegeta's, um, history with them. Still, I suppose I should have made it a little clearer, perhaps I'll go back and fix it.

Everyone else: Thanks for all the reviews (especially Erica who reviewed it a record SEVEN time!). You guys are great. I'll try and get another chapter out before the end of the weekend, I already have a pretty good portion of it done.


	16. Sacrifice

**Chapter Sixteen: Sacrifice**

o

Bra's scream of terror was muffled by the powerful hand clapped over her mouth. She struggled for a moment, trying to break free, but an arm wrapped around her and pinned her arms to her sides.

"Shhh," Uubu's soft voice whispered in her ear, quieting her fears as he removed his hand from her mouth, "Don't move, don't make a sound, just concentrating on suppressing your ki...we aren't alone."

Bra relaxed in the warrior's arms and did her best to do as she was told. Her ki manipulation was basic at best, but she was able to push at least some of her power down. She could feel the muscles in Uubu's chest and arms flexing in agitation as he scanned their surroundings with both his eyes and his ki sensing abilities.

"Is it gone?" she whispered after a few minutes.

"No," he whispered back, his eyes filled with worry, "At least I don't think so."

He barely felt the attack in time as a thin ki blast shot out from behind one of the trees and shot towards him. He dodged to the side, bringing Bra with him, and the blast struck a log just behind them, turning it into dust. Uubu summoned a small amount of ki into his palm and through it at the ground, kicking up dust and debris to mask their escape route as he flew through the woods, Bra held tightly in his arms.

The Mystical One chanced a glance over his shoulder as he fled the area. He thought he could just make out a dark shape watching them from the shadows of a large tree, but whatever it was vanished before Uubu could make out any of its features. Still not sure if the danger had passed, he held Bra closer to his chest and put on a renewed burst of speed, not stopping until they were back at the house.

As quickly as possible, he ushered Bra through the door, told everyone to stay inside, and then headed back out. He rose into the sky above the building and powered up slightly, determined to protect the house with everything he had.

ooo

"Did you guys find anything?" Goten asked as he and Trunks landed on top of the building that the other Z-Fighters were waiting on.

The question was greeted with silence and a nervous shuffling of feet by Gohan and Yamcha.

"Maybe," Gohan said after a moment, "I saw someone acting suspici--" He's sentence broke off and everyone's head whipped around as they felt Uubu power up.

"Shit!" Trunks swore as he shot into the sky, not waiting for the others to wake from their shock; he'd lost his parents already, he'd be damned if he was going to lose his sister too. He transformed and put on a new burst of speed.

A second later, the rest of the Z-Fighters were in the air and chasing after him as fast as they could.

ooo

Uubu's eyes narrowed as he watched the forest surrounding the house, he wasn't sure how he knew, but he was certain whatever it was that had been in the woods with Bra was out there somewhere. He dropped into the fighting stance Goku had taught him years ago and waited patiently. If he accomplished nothing else, he was going to live long enough for the rest of the fighters to arrive; he could already feel them heading towards him.

A shadow moved just slightly, Uubu fired a ki blast at it. A moment before the blast hit, it was swatted back at him. The Mystical One dodged nimbly and then dropped to the ground, facing the shadow.

"Leave," he commanded forcefully.

"And if I say 'no'?" the shadow asked.

Uubu was quiet for a moment, the voice sounded familiar, but he couldn't figure out where he'd heard it before. "If you say 'no,' then I'll have no choice but to kill you," he replied evenly.

A dark, evil chuckled rippled through the air. "Believe me child, you'd be lucky to last five minutes."

"Care to try me?"

"You are not the one that I'm here for, you don't need to die," the shadow said. "I'm only after the monkeys and those that ally themselves with them."

"You're just here for Bra?"

"For the moment. Vegeta's line must be cut off...that of the one called Goku as well," it sounded like the shadow was smiling, "Believe me, the universe will be a much better place with those barbarians taken out of it."

Uubu looked at the mystery creature in confusion. "Why are you doing this?" he asked.

"Let's just say the reasons are...personal. Very personal."

The young man dropped into his fighting stance again. "I won't let you touch her," he said as his powerful aura began to swirl around him.

"You fool; you'd stand up for the spawn of a man that committed genocide..." the shadow paused, "No, its worse than that isn't it? You're developing feelings for that vile thi—" The creature's head shifted as it sensed the rapidly approaching power levels.

"Very clever," it said as its focus returned to Uubu, "You just plan on keeping me busy until they get here...But at what cost to yourself?"

"I'd give my life to protect my friends."

"To protect your friends? Or to protect her?" the voice asked. "Well, it doesn't really matter does it? Both reasons end with you dead, the details are inconsequential." The shadow pointed a finger at the young man's chest and fired a thin ki beam.

Time slowed down for Uubu, the attack seemed to take forever to reach him, but he still couldn't move fast enough to get out of the way or even power up enough to minimize the damage; he couldn't believe that he'd been dumb enough not to power up to his max, but he had wanted to leave himself some reserves. In desperation he tried to dodge to the left, but the thin beam sliced deep into his chest and shot out through his right shoulder blade. The young man's eyes went wide with pain as blood began streaming down his chest and back while still more came up through his mouth everytime he took a breath.

Uubu sank to his knees as he felt consciouness begin to leave him. He toppled over on his back as the world seemed to swirl with a dark mist; everything began to fade to black. And then, in the midst of the darkness, the shadow appeared before him, he tried to make out the face, but his eyes couldn't focus anymore.

"Pathetic," his attacker taunted, "But take solace in the fact that, for the moment, you saved your friend's life...I'll have to kill her another time." The shadow left as Uubu's eyes closed and his body sagged.

ooo

The returning Z-Fighters felt Uubu's power drop as they streaked over the ocean towards the island. Their faces all became grim with determination as they tried to add even more speed to their flights.

_'Hold on Bra,'_ Trunks begged, _'I'll be there as soon as I can.'_

ooo

"Oh no," Krillin whispered as Uubu's power seemed to vanish.

Bra took one look at his face and guessed what had happened, she had felt Uubu's power drop, but she knew that the former monk would be able to feel it a lot more acurately than she could. She started to run to the door but Chiaotzu grabbed her hand.

"Please, you can't go out there," the mime-like fighter told her.

"What are you talking about?" the Saiyan yelled. "We have to help him, we can't just let him die out there."

"Chiaotzu is right," Mater Roshi said from his chair. "If you go out there now, you will be throwing away everything that Uubu sacrificed himself for. Wait until the others get here."

Bra glared daggers at the old man, but couldn't argue with him. She ran to the window and looked out, at the edge of the forest she could see Uubu's prone body. She tried to see where the attacker had gone, but he could literally be hiding anywhere, waiting for her to come out of the building.

Then a thought hit her, _'If he could defeat Uubu so quickly, then he didn't need to wait for anyone to come out, he could easily take Krillin, Chiaotzu and herself out without any trouble.'_ She ran to the door, threw it open, ignoring the shouts of protests from the three men, and rushed towards the downed warrior. _'Please Uubu, I can't loose another person I care for.'_

Ooo

Trunks, Pan, Gohan, and the other warriors landed next to Uubu and Bra just as the young woman was kneeling over the bleeding man. The Z-Fighters couldn't help but stare at the young man as Bra put her ear to his chest, searching desperately for a heart beat; Uubu didn't have a bruise or scratch on him except for the relatively small home in his chest.

'_One attack,'_ Trunks realized, _'Whoever did this took Uubu out in one shot! What kind of power does it take to do something like that to one of the strongest fighters in the universe?'_ The Saiyan knew that Uubu hadn't been at full power when he was attacked, but that was hardly a consolatory thought, all that meant was that the attacker was able to hit Uubu before he even had the chance to go to his max. The enemy had to have an enormous power level, but no one had felt it and the Mystical One hadn't realized what he was up against until it was too late.

"Is he..." Pan fearfully started to ask as Bra pulled away from the blood covered chest.

"Not yet..." the aqua haired girl replied, "but he won't last much longer unless we do something."

Without a word, Trunks scooped up the injured warrior and ran towards the house, the rest of the group following close behind him. Once inside, he carefully set Uubu down on a couch, reached into his pocket and pulled out a capsule case. He removed one with a red label and tossed it at the far corner of the room. It exploded with a puff of smoke which quickly dispersed to reveal a rejuvenation tank.

"Where did you get that?" Goten asked in surprise.

"I went back to Capsule Corp a couple of days ago to get...some stuff," Trunks replied as he helped Bra set Uubu into the tank.

"Did you get anything else?" Gohan asked.

"Uh, no, not really...most of mom's inventions and spare capsules were destroyed in the battle," the lavender haired young man looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet slightly.

"Too bad," Krillin said, "Bulma usually had some pretty handy stuff lying around."

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence at the mention of their recently departed friend; the only sound was the soft humming coming from the tank that Uubu was gently bobbing up and down in.

ooo

That night, the house was completely dark except for the faint, blue light coming from the rejuvenation tank. Trunks, Gohan, and Goten were taking shifts guarding the house outside, but there hadn't been a sign of the attacker. Bra was sitting on the living room floor staring at the tank and its occupant, her mind swirling too fast for her to even think about sleeping.

Uubu had almost died for her and even now the only reason he was still alive was because her brother had had the foresight to pickup a rejuvenation tank at the ruins of Capsule Corp. It made her sick to her stomach to be a liability. She knew that the killer had come for her, though she couldn't guess why, and Uubu had sacrificed himself to keep her safe. The young man was very much like Pan's grandfather had been, always protecting others with no thought to his own wellbeing.

She inched closer and inspected the injured warrior's peaceful face. He wasn't good looking in the traditional sense, but there was definitely something pure and beautiful about him, something that seemed to transcend good looks. The aqua haired woman smiled as she watched him bobbing up and down; and then her eyes went wide with fear as she heard a door open quietly and soft footfalls coming in her direction. She quickly tried to hide in the shadows, fearing the murderer had returned to finish what he'd started.

"It's just me," Pan's voice whispered to her.

Bra relaxed and moved back into the light, resuming her vigil over Uubu.

"Can't sleep?" the dark haired woman asked as she joined her on the floor.

"No," Bra replied stiffly.

Pan glanced at the tank and smiled, "Don't worry, Trunks says he should be fine by tomorrow night."

"Yeah, I just, you know, wanted to be here if he needed anything..."

Pan's smile turned into a smirk. "Oh. I get it now."

"Huh?" Bra looked up in alarm.

"You like him."

Bra blushed and then her face fell into a Vegeta-like scowl. "I don't know what you're talking about!" she whispered fiercely, "He got hurt protecting me, I owe him."

Pan climbed to her feet and headed for the stairs. As she reached for the railing she looked over her shoulder and said, "Yeah, maybe...but you also like him." And then she was gone.

The aqua haired Saiyan's scowl deepened, she glanced at the tank again and looked hard at the young man. Bra thought she might like Pan better when she was pinning over Akira.

"We're just friends...but I guess you are kind of cute," she whispered to Uubu.

She thought she might have seen Uubu's lips curl up just slightly, but when she looked again, his face was emotionless. She turned, leaned her back up against the tank, and was asleep in moments.

o

o

A/N: Another chapter that I didn't proof read other than running spell check on it. If there are any really bad mistakes just let me know. Anyway, no Akira in this chapter either, but I think he'll at least have a small part in the next chapter. I hope you guys liked this chapter, thanks for all of the reviews.

Nadz: I'm glad to hear that you like this story better than the Ammit Saga, I didn't at first, but it really has grown on me. I hope that when it's all said and done everyone will at least like this one as much.

Toni-the-mink: I'm glad that you caught the slight Bra-Uubu thing. I didn't want it to be too obvious, because it didn't seem to fit with the current goings on in the story, but I thought that two kids about the same age stuck on an island together with no one else to talk with (Pan being a bit hung up on all things Akira) something was bound to happen...or at least start to happen. I won't be using the past you have set up for Icalla (or at least not mentioning it any more than just in passing), by the way, was she okay in this chapter? I've been avoiding her a little more than I originally intended since I haven't really gotten a feel for her yet, but after the turning point in the story she'll hopefully stand out a little more. "Wow, just one chapter of hints and I'm already planning Uubu and Bra's wedding! I sound like Videl and Chi-chi when Pan and Akira first hooked up!" ïƒŸYeah, you kind of do, but I'll forgive ya...

Erica: Don't worry about it; I've done that more than once myself. It was just really funny to get all the emails for the reviews only to find that they were all the same review. So, don't be embarrassed, I thought it was great.

Rejhan: Good, I've seen enough pictures of Bra to know that she was essentially a Bulma clone (at least in appearance). I'm glad to hear that she wasn't blatantly out of character in the last chapter.

Donkeykong27: Having now gone back through and read the last chapter outside of when I was writing it, I must say that I agree with you, that was one of my better chapters. I hope you liked this one as much.


	17. Another Encounter

**Chapter Seventeen: Another Encounter**

o

A/N: There is a small flashback in the middle of this chapter. It will be all in italics like a thought, I'm sure you'll recognize it, but I wanted to give you forewarning so there's no confusion.

o

Uubu's eyes slowly opened in the green fluid surrounding him; it took him a moment to realize where he was and another to figure out how to get out. He pressed a button next to the small, round window and waited patiently while the liquid drained and the door opened. He gingerly climbed out of the tank and promptly tripped over the sleeping form of Bra.

The mohawked warrior threw out his hands as he fell forward catching himself just before his face hit Bra's. The female demi Saiyan stared up at him for a moment and blushed, Uubu suddenly found himself feeling very awkward.

"Uh...ha ha, sorry about that...I, uh, didn't see you," he mumbled.

"Oh, no problem..." the young woman cocked an eyebrow and smirked, "Um, do you want to get off me or are we going to lie here all day?"

"What? Oh, uh, yeah, sorry..." Uubu hastily scrambled to his feet. "So...I guess...you know, I should go change cloths, or something."

Bra smiled as her eyes traveled over his body, he still had on pants, but his chest was bare, "That's probably a good idea."

The young man started to make his way towards the stairs when a soft hand reached out and took his. He looked down at her hand on his and blushed.

"I just wanted to thank you...for yesterday. You were really brave."

Uubu smiled, "It was nothing; you'd have done the same for me."

They stared at each other for a few more minutes and then Uubu awkwardly excused himself and headed upstairs.

Later that day, Gohan and Trunks called a meeting and declared that no one was to go anywhere without at least one other person with them. The first few days everyone strictly followed the rule, but as the week wore on, it became easier and easier to forget. With no developments in the case and nothing new to report, the news reports of the double homicide in South Capital slowly died down until the biggest story on the TV was the birth of sextuplets in Thyme Town. The only eventful thing of interest that the Z-Fighters could watch for entertainment was the budding relationship between Uubu and Bra. The two didn't talk much, though Uubu didn't talk a lot anyway, but after a few days the household began to notice that the young man blushed every time his eyes fell on the aqua haired woman and she seemed to make excuses to be near him whenever possible.

Trunks wasn't exactly pleased with the development, in his eyes no one was really good enough for his sister, but he had to admit that Uubu was about as close to being acceptable as anyone was likely to get. He did his best not to be overly protective and manage not to throw any punches when Goten teased him about the situation, but only just barely.

Despite missing Icalla so much he often ached for her touch, his mood had been improving recently. He had been no longer fluctuating between depression and unbridled fury as he had during the days immediately following his parents' deaths. At times he had even felt rather happy.

Unfortunately the attack on Bra had torn all that away. He felt it was his failure that had resulted in her and Uubu's near death. If he hadn't allowed himself to be lured away from the house, he would still have been around to help. He vowed that he would not let his guard down again.

ooo

Ten days after the attack, Pan had just finished her morning shower and was drying her hair while gazing longingly at a picture of her and Akira that sat by her bed, when suddenly her cell phone rang. The young woman answered it in surprise; no one had called her in quite a while except for her mother who called every other evening. She glanced at the caller ID: Grandpa Satan.

"Hi grandpa, what's up?" she asked cheerfully.

--Pan! Oh thank god you answered!-- Hurcule sounded almost hysterical.

"Are you okay grandpa?" she asked, an uneasy feeling coming over her.

--Pan honey, I'm so sorry, but your friends...your roommates...-- his voice trailed off.

"What? What is it? Do you mean Stacy and Zori? What's wrong with them?" she almost screamed into the phone.

--Honey, the police just told me...they...they're dead.-- Pan almost dropped the phone as she sank to her knees; for a long time she didn't say anything and for once in his life, Hurcule was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

"How?" she growled out the question.

--The police said it was a murder...they think it might have been that serial killer...The Butcher.--

This time Pan did drop the phone. Her aura exploded around her as she screamed in rage, hot tears burning her eyes. She walked to the window, threw it open and leapt into the air, her now blonde hair flapping in the wind as she flew towards Satan City.

ooo

The whole house trembled as Gohan felt Pan power up. He rushed upstairs just in time to see her shoot out the window. He stared after her in confusion and then noticed the phone on the floor.

"Hello?" he asked as he placed it to his ear.

--Hello? Gohan, is that you?--Hurcule's voice came through the other end.

"Mr. Satan, do you know what happened to Pan?"

--I had to tell her...her roommates are dead. The police were over here just a few hours ago to tell me since I own the apartment. I just didn't want her to find out through the news, I thought someone should tell her.--

Gohan dropped the phone and took off after his daughter; a moment later, Goten and Yamcha were following him. Hercules voice continued to squawk through the discarded cell phone for several minutes before Kumo found it. The little boy played with the phone and giggled at the funny noises it made until Krillin found him, took it away, and turned it off without saying anything to the bewildered 'World's Greatest Fighter.'

ooo

Pan could feel her father and uncle behind her, but with her Super Saiyan Two speed, she was steadily pulling away from them, apparently they hadn't bothered to ascend yet.

_'Good,'_ she thought, _'if I can at least get close to home, they'll have to hold off the lecture until after we're done.'_

She was just passing over the downtown area of the city when a dark object appeared in front of her. Pan pulled up and hovered, watching the floating figure in confusion for a moment.

"Ah, Pan, right?" the figure chuckled, "I've been wondering how long it would take for you to appear."

The man was dressed from head to toe in black; he wore gloves and a mask so that all she could see of him were his blue-green eyes. Despite the fact that he was hovering just in front of her, she couldn't sense any sort of energy coming off of him. He was definitely the one she was looking for.

"Why have you been doing this?" she asked angrily.

"Doing what?" the man asked with a slight chuckle. "There are so many things that I've done. Do you mean, why did I snuff out Bulma's life in front of her husband? Or why I beat the shit out of Vegeta and then run him through? Or perhaps you are referring to the way I gutted your grandmother like a pig in the slaughterhouse?"

Pan's rage burned inside her, but she tried to keep a straight face, knowing that her enemy was only goading her. "So this time you've decided not going to hide in the shadows and attack defenseless girls?" she asked, making sure to push her power level as high as she could. "Are you tired of being a coward or have you just grown stupid?"

"Against you hiding in the shadows would be make things too easy, all of you Saiyans are helpless before my might!" he replied in a voice muffled by his mask. A moment later the killer vanished.

Pan searched the skies, but couldn't find him anywhere; without the use of her senses, she felt blind. Then someone tapped her on the shoulder, she turned just as a fist slammed into her face, sending her smashing into the side of a near by building.

The young Saiyan shook the cobwebs from her head and shot out of the crater, rushing towards the murderer as fast as she could. She reared back and swung at his face; her hand passed through the after-image, leaving her horribly off balance. The man appeared next to her and drove his knee into her stomach, and then brought both fists down hard on her back. Pan dropped from the sky and created a large crater as she crashed into the sidewalk.

Pedestrians gawked at her as she gingerly pulled her self from the hole. Her shirt was ripped badly and a small stream of blood was running down her chin. She stared up at her enemy with murderous rage. Her golden aura flared around her as she powered up, eliciting cries of dismay and fear from the crowd, and then she shot into the air.

ooo

Gohan could feel what seemed like a fight up ahead. Pan's life force was fluctuating wildly, but there didn't seem to be anyone around her. He went to the next level at the exact same time as Goten, both men reaching the same conclusion. Pan was fighting the killer.

ooo

Pan was throwing punches and kicks as fast as she could, but it was like trying to catch mist with your hands; every time she thought she'd out maneuvered him, the man would simply vanish and reappear just out of her range. She had always hated not being taken seriously and that was exactly what her opponent was doing now. Her anger clouded her mind as she made it her singular mission to just land one blow on the mysterious warrior.

"So, this is the extent of your strength is it?" he taunted as he continued to dodge her wild attacks, "Pathetic."

Pan growled as she threw another punch, but he bent over backwards and as she sailed over him he reached up and grabbed her foot. With a mighty swing he threw her back at the ground.

The powerful Saiyan was dazed as she climbed out of her latest crater, this one was in the middle of the street. A loud honk from a car brought her back to reality as the speeding vehicle came to a screeching halt. Her enemy landed with a loud thud on top of the car.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!?" the owner of the car yelled at Pan. "Get out of the street you stupid bitch! And you, get off my car before I call the cops!"

Pan saw the man in black wink at her through his mask. She tried to call out a warning to the idiotic motorist, but before she could, the murderer reached through the top of the car, grabbed the man by his neck, and pulled him back through the roof. The car owner gave a loud scream of terror and dismay as he was tossed towards a building across the street; the scream was cut short by a flag pole that ripped through his chest, leaving him hanging and dripping blood on the shocked crowd below.

ooo

Bra was relaxing in the bathtub, she had felt the house shake, but didn't think much of it. In a house full of people strong enough to effortlessly destroy the entire planet, a little shaking wasn't completely out of the norm. The aqua haired woman let out a soft sigh and began washing herself off; as she raised her arm to wash her armpits, there was a noise just outside.

She turned and let out a shriek at the sight of Master Roshi leering at her through the window. How exactly the peeping tom had managed to get up to the second story window was not something Bra bothered to find out as she hurriedly wrapped a towel around herself and ran out of the room.

The aqua haired woman threw some clothes on and ran out the front door, her face burning with humiliation and anger. As she walked away from the house she noticed a ladder leaning against the wall; with a swift kick, the ladder and a perverted old man came crashing to the ground.

ooo

"Now then, where were we?" the killer asked nonchalantly as he turned from the sight of the limp motorist handing from the flag pole.

The demi Saiyan looked at him in horror. "Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Revenge," was the simple reply.

"But that man...he didn't do anything to you. What does he have to do with your revenge?"

"Mostly he was just annoying, but also, the human race has many things in common with you monkeys. They think only of themselves, preying on the weak, throwing away the lives of children in the wars of their governments. They even show some signs of eventually gaining a similar strength to that of the Saiyans. Although..." the man's voice trailed off as if he were suddenly considering something, "perhaps if someone were to guide them in the proper way, they could be molded into a proper civilization. Maybe when my revenge on the Saiyan's is complete I'll help the human's become what the Arleans never had the chance to achieve." He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of three rapidly approaching power levels. "I'd say we have just over five minutes until your friends arrive, let's try to put on a good show, shall we?"

Without warning he hopped off the car and charged her, Pan barely had time to brace herself before his fist struck her face.

_'Oh Kami, he's so fast!'_ she thought, _'how am I supposed to beat someone who moves like this? I can hardly even see him, let alone hit him.'_

The mysterious warrior spun quickly and slammed his elbow into her gut, sending her flying down the street. A kick to the back brought her flight to a sudden halt, leaving her wide open for a vicious uppercut that sent her into the air. The murderer appeared above her a second later and threw a ki blast into her back sending her crashing face first into the ground, leaving an imprint of her body in the street.

ooo

Trunks saw Bra run out and heard the turtle hermit fall off of his ladder. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened. The Saiyan warrior knew he should be mad, but it was almost a relief for Roshi to be up to his old tricks.

_'At least some things never change,'_ Trunks thought to himself. He'd go find her in a few minutes, after she'd had a chance to calm down and blow off some steam. He closed his eyes and began focusing on the fight again. Gohan and the others were almost there, if Pan could hold on just a few moments longer, she'd be fine.

ooo

Pan painfully forced her eyes open, glanced over shoulder, and then leapt out of the way as a powerful fist came down and cracked the ground where her head had been a moment before. The young Saiyan charged at the man and threw a punch at his back, but before the fist could reach him, he turned and caught her fist. With a squeeze she was brought to her knees as she cried out in pain; then the killer kneed her in the face and once again Pan was laid out on the street.

The raven haired warrior pulled herself to her feet taking huge gulps of air while blood ran down the side of her face as she glared the man who didn't seem to have even broken a sweat yet.

"Well, I think you understand where you stand now," the killer said. "I'd kill you now, but there are some...extenuating circumstances. Besides, you haven't felt pain yet; not until you've felt true loss will I let you die."

"What are you talking about?" Pan asked in a weak voice.

"You'll find out soon enough," the man brought two fingers to his forehead. "You should go see how I redecorated your apartment, I think you'll enjoy the artistry of it...I hope you like red." Pan gasped in surprise as he vanished. She recognized that technique, Akira used it all the time.

_Pan's anger burned as she became a Super Saiyan. "You're wrong," she growled forcefully._

_"Am I?" Trunks asked as he crossed his arms, "Does anyone know where he was when dad was killed, or Chi-chi? The guy looks like he hasn't slept in a month. I've seen the way he's been acting this last week, he's not acting normal. And..." he paused and looked around the room, "I'm not the first one to accuse him. We found a Namek in the village we visited and he called Akira a murderer too."_

_"He wouldn't do that," Pan said, but not nearly as forcefully._

_"How do you know?" Trunks shot back. **"He has all the abilities and the strength to pull it off."**_

Pan looked at the ground, tears welling up in her eyes. _'Please Akira, don't let it be true_,' she thought desperately.

ooo

Bra imagined the turtle hermit's face on a small tree and then threw a punch that reduced it to splinters. She didn't train ever, but her natural strength was still there when she needed to trash something.

"Nice shot," a warm voice said behind her.

Bra spun, a sudden rush of fear induced adrenalin flowing through her body. The sight of the owner of the voice left her relieved, though slightly confused.

"Akira, you scared me," she said with a smile to the young man sitting in the dirt at the edge of the clearing.

"Sorry about that," the warrior replied, standing up and dusting off his black pants as he walked towards her. Bra couldn't help but notice that he seemed much happier and well rested since the last time she'd seen him. He almost looked like the old Akira again, but there was something in his face that seemed just a little bit off.

_'He still must not be sleeping very well,'_ she thought. "So, what brings you here? I didn't know if we were ever going to see you again."

"I'm just back to take care of some unfinished business, after that I'll probably drop in every once in a while."

Bra was slightly perplexed by his answer, but shrugged it off and said, "Do you want to talk to Trunks? He's back at the house. I guess you two do have some things to work out..." she turned and started to lead the way out of the woods, but a strong, gloved hand grabbed her wrist before she could take more than two steps.

"Actually, my business is with you," the young man said with an evil smile as he released her wrist, "You managed to escape last time, but this time you will die."

Bra closed her eyes as his fist rushed towards her face.

o

o

A/N: This chapter and the next one were originally just one chapter, but as more ideas kept coming and the chapter kept growing it eventually had to become two. Anyway, what did you think? There was actually a fight here (it's been a while since I wrote a real one of those) and there shall be another in the next chapter. After that I think there will be more violence as we get closer to the halfway point of the story. Lately things have really been flowing so you'll probably see at least one chapter before the weekend (Friday at the latest) and possibly another during the weekend.

Donkeykong27: You might be squeezing water out of stones a little there. When I said Akira wasn't going to make an appearance I meant he won't be appearing in an identifiable way. At the same time, the scene with 'Akira' here wasn't the one that I meant when I said he would be in this chapter. That scene was moved to the end of the next chapter.

Draco the Destroyer: Good eye! Yup the two victims and also the names for the reporters come from voice actors from the series. Chuck Huber was the English voice actor for Kibito and Garlic Jr., Itou Miki was the Japanese voice actor for android 18, and Laara Sadig was the English actor for Chi-chi (seasons 1-2). I like to throw in random names like that for characters that have little or no impact on the story; just a funny way to keep myself amused. I hope you liked this chapter more than the last one.

Mismelly219: I'm glad that you've been enjoying my stories. Yes, things are sad for Akira and Pan and will probably get sadder before (if ever) they get happier. Don't worry though, I think that everything will turn out okay in the end...unless this becomes the DBGT to the DBZ of the Ammit Saga, in which case lots of people will dislike me.

Rejhan: Yeah, it's fun to write stuff without him for a while. I think I was getting too bogged down in the boohoo for Akira part of the story. I was on the verge of writer's block when I shipped him off and now things are coming much easier.

Nadz: If you haven't guessed, Uubu will play a decent sized roll in the next chapter. I enjoy writing about him, though I feel like I don't know enough about him to do his character justice. Hopefully I won't screw him up too badly.

Erica: Yeah, the Saiyans (and Vegeta's line in particular) are in a bit more danger than they realized. Trunks will get his shot at the 'monster' (as you put it), but not for a few more chapters.

Toni the Mink: I haven't really thought about it much. I don't know a lot about building or maintaining web pages. It would be kind of interesting, but I don't need any more DB:NB on my brain than I already have. It might be a fun idea when I finish this story. Time will tell, I guess.

Anouk: Yeah, that did sound bad. No worries though, I knew what you meant. Actually, your review gave me the idea that I needed to get her out of the house and away from those with the strength to protect her. Kind of funny that "Bra action" made me realize that Master Roshi hadn't been peeping on any girls yet in this story. Thankfully I've managed to correct that oversight.

Thank you all for your reviews and to those who may be reading, but not reviewing, thanks for at least reading the story, though I would love to hear from you.


	18. The Price of Loving a Saiyan

**Chapter Eighteen: The Price of Loving a Saiyan**

o

AN: There are some pretty gruesome scenes in this chapter. It might be pushing the 'PG13' rating a bit, so consider your selves forewarned.

o

Pan flew up to the window of her apartment and cringed, the window covered in a red substance, making it impossible to see inside. She carefully lifted the window, wincing slightly as her body let its disapproval of any movement known, and ducked inside. After the beating she'd taken earlier, she was just glad she was still able to move; she'd wanted to wait for her father and uncle, but had decided to get to the apartment as quickly as possible and wait for them there.

The sight that greeted her brought bile to her mouth; she quickly stuck her head out the window and threw up, suddenly wishing she'd waited longer before coming. With her stomach empty, she forced herself to take in the devastation of her home.

There were several references to Vegeta and Saiyans written in blood on the walls. The living room was trashed, blood and gore were everywhere. She thanked Kami that the police had already removed the bodies so she wouldn't have to see the grisly state they must have been left in. Though as she looked around, she couldn't imagine there'd been much left. Her two wonderful, beautiful, silly roommates had probably been ripped to shreds.

She closed her eyes as tears began to swell up once again. Her friends were dead, killed in a horribly painful way, and the man she loved might have been the one who did it.

_'No!'_ she yelled at herself, _'Akira would never do this! I won't believe it. It's just not possible. Just because that bastard can use instant transmission and hide his power doesn't mean that he's Akira. He can just do things like Akira...that's it...that's got to be it.'_

"Pan?" a soft voice whispered from the other side of the room.

Pan looked up at her father and Uncle; she could feel Yamcha hovering above the building, serving as a lookout. They both looked as horrified as she felt, but she could tell they were trying to be strong for her.

"Are you alright?" Gohan asked, observing the cuts and bruises on her face.

"No. Zori and Stacy, they're...he..." her voice failed her as sobs wracked her body. Her father's arms were around her in a heartbeat and her uncle stood next to the two with his hand on her shoulder.

"That's not what I meant," Gohan whispered, "I mean are you hurt? We could feel you fighting someone."

"It was...him. The one who did this...he found me."

"How did you get away?" Goten asked.

"He just left. He said it wasn't my time yet...and he used Instant Transmission," she'd thought about holding the last part back, not wanting to incriminate Akira, but she knew that the older Saiyans needed to know exactly what they were up against.

"Instant Transmission? Are you sure?" Goten asked and Pan, still holding onto her father, nodded. Goten and Gohan glanced at each other and then turned back to the distraught young woman.

They were starting to lead her back to the window when they felt a huge power up coming from the island.

All three looked at each other and swore as they ran to the window and leapt into the air, flying as fast as possible towards the island.

ooo

After a few seconds, Bra opened her eyes, the punch had never landed; the moment her eyes were open she could see why: Uubu was standing next to her, his hand tightly gripping her attacker's wrist.

"What are you doing, Akira?" the mohawked warrior asked.

"You should know, you were behind those trees long enough to have heard. I'm just finishing what I started," the young man smiled sadly, "Unfortunately I can't toy with you like last time, I don't want to be here when the others realize what's going on, so I'll finish this quickly." The warrior's hair became blonde and grew down to the middle of his back while his eyebrows vanished; he smirked and pulled away from Uubu.

With impossible speed his hand lashed out and sent the tan warrior flying. The Mystical One crashed through several trees before coming to a stop, he held his ribs as he climbed to his feet, the last person he could remember hitting him close to that hard had been Omega Shenron, the thought was not comforting.

"You should have stayed away," a voice whispered behind him, "You had your chance, you know. I might have let you live if you'd left the bitch to die."

Uubu turned and threw a punch at the blonde warrior, but a gloved hand caught his fist before it got anywhere close to his opponent's face. The powerful warrior squeezed hard and Uubu cried out in pain as the bones in his hand disintegrated under the incredible force.

The murderer's other hand came up and wrapped around the tan skinned warrior's neck and lifted him off the ground.

The world was growing dark for Uubu when suddenly a small fist struck his opponent in the face. The golden warrior didn't seem to be hurt, but he was distracted. He dropped Uubu to the ground and with a mighty back hand sent Bra crashing through some trees on the far side of the clearing. She slumped to the ground in an unconscious heap as the black clad warrior stalked towards her.

ooo

Trunks felt Uubu's power explode into existence a short distance from Bra's and then begin to fade, he leapt to his feet and ran towards the door just as Krillin and Tien were doing the same.

"Stay here!" he commanded, "Protect Kumo and Roshi! I'll handle this."

They started to reply, but the look in Trunks' eyes left no room for argument. Both of the humans looked at each other with grim looks on their faces as the younger man became a Super Saiyan and flew straight through the door without bothering to open it.

Trunks flew with speed born of desperation; he shot into the woods like a golden rocket. Just as he passed by a large tree a sharp blow to the back of his head brought him crashing to the ground as his hair returned to its usual lavender color. His eyes closed as consciousness left him.

A dark form stood over him and whispered, "You time is not yet, heir of Vegeta. Only when you have felt some of the pain that the survivor of Arlea has felt for over forty years will you be sent to the hell that awaits the remainders of your people."

The dark figure melted back into the shadows, leaving Trunks lying unconscious in a shallow rut on the forest floor.

ooo

Uubu regained the young man's attention by firing a large ki blast, striking the golden warrior in the back.

The killer turned and glared at the tan skinned human for a second and then grinned, "You're right, I do need to finish you first. I kill the monkey when I can fully enjoy the sight."

In an instant he was behind Uubu, the mohawked warrior threw a punch with his one good hand, but it was easily swatted away. Half a second later, he was sent flipping into the air by a kick to the face. Just as he managed to regain control of his flight, a fist sunk deep into his stomach. Uubu coughed up blood and blacked out for a moment, his opponent smiled and proceeded to pound on him with a series of fast, hard blows before finally letting him fall back to the ground.

Uubu managed to pull himself together a moment before he crashed into the forest floor. With a surge of ki he caught himself in the air, hovering a few inches above the ground. He looked up just in time to see a shoe come down on his face, burying his head in the dirt while his legs stuck up in the air.

For a moment Uubu felt like giving up and dying right there. He'd never really trained with Akira much and certainly hadn't ever fought the younger man all out. Now he wished he never had; Akira's strength and speed were a terrible sight to behold. Uubu just didn't have the power to keep up with him; the only two people that he thought might have been able to reach him were Goku and Vegeta. And they were already gone. Perhaps one of the other Saiyan's would reach this power level someday if they rededicated their lives to training, but it would take years. And then, as Uubu felt the comforting darkness of oblivion reaching up to grab him, an image of Bra's unconscious body floated through his mind.

Uubu's eyes snapped open underground and his remaining power erupted around him, pushing the dirt and rocks away. The glowing fighter climbed to his feet, his injured hand held close to his body, and turned to face the man that wanted to murder him.

"I will not let you harm her!" Uubu snarled as he shot forward with incredible speed. He threw a vicious punch at the younger man's face, but the powerful warrior simply moved his head slightly and the attack hit nothing but air. As the momentum of his punch carried Uubu forward, a powerful hand once again latched onto his neck.

"You don't get it, do you?" he punched Uubu in the face. "You don't stand a chance here." Another blow to the face, opening a large gash over Uubu's eye. "You won't save her." Yet another punch, this time breaking the Mystical One's nose. "You won't even live to see the end of this day," the powerful warrior said slamming Uubu into the ground.

Uubu was once again fighting just to stay conscious. Most of his energy was depleted, though he still had a small reserve, which he began slowly drawing into his closed hand, praying that Akira wouldn't notice.

"Akira...we were friends...why are you doing this?" the mohawked warrior whispered through his cracked lips.

The younger man leaned over him and started shaking his head, "We have never been friends," he said with a grin. And then his face softened ever so slightly, "I really didn't want to kill you, you know. You are a decently good person, despite the man who trained you. But you sided with the murderers, with the Saiyans, and now your fate has been sealed."

Uubu's hand was beginning to glow slightly; he did his best to keep the other warriors attention. "But...but...you're...you're a Saiyan too."

A fist slammed into the ground next to his face, "Don't ever call me that! I am nothing like those barbarians! They committed genocide for fun! I'm saving the universe from their evil."

_'It's ready,'_ Uubu thought as he said, "You can't deny what you truly are, and you will pay for your crimes!" His hand shot up and an enormous ki blast erupted from his palm, hitting the blond warrior in the face.

Uubu breathed a sigh of relief and smiled, but his smile faded almost as soon as it appeared. The smoke in front of him was clearing to reveal a singed man with a murderous look on his face.

"That was really stupid," he growled as he reached down and pulled the worn out warrior to his feet.

Uubu had thrown the last of his energy into the attack, but it hadn't done much, if any, harm. He wished that he'd had more left to put into the attack, the fact that it had struck home meant that if he'd had more to give, it might have been enough to end the fight, or at least give Bra a chance to escape.

The golden warrior punched Uubu in the stomach, doubling him over and then kneed him in the face, lifting him off the ground. The Mystical One was looking up at the blue sky as he fell towards the ground when a hand appeared under his back, stopping his flight; Uubu knew the end had come. He squeezed his eyes shut in pain as a huge ki blast ripped through his back and out his stomach.

Bra awoke to Uubu's cries of agony, just in time to see the blast die down. The golden warrior holding Uubu's now limp body over his head was covered in the tan fighter's blood, which was dripping down from the enormous hole in Uubu's back. The murderer turned to her and grinned, walking towards her with the Mystical One still in his hand. Bra closed her eyes and turned away from the grisly sight.

"Look at him," Akira's voice commanded. "He's given his life trying to protect you, now look at him!"

She opened her eyes and found herself staring into Uubu's dark eyes.

"He would have lived if it weren't for you. Death is the price for loving or protecting a Saiyan!" ki flowed around the powerful warrior's free hand as he spoke.

Bra's eyes filled tears and a heavy fog seemed to settle over her brain. She sat perfectly still, completely numb until a weak, soft voice cut through the haze.

"Don't cry," Uubu whispered, "I d...on't mind...dying for...you...It...was...worth it."

The golden warrior brought his hand down hard; slicing through Uubu's neck like it was made of butter. The Mystical One's head fell to the ground and the arteries in his neck sprayed blood into Bra's face. She screamed in complete, unthinking horror. She continued screaming as Uubu's headless body was dropped to the ground. She didn't stop when the mohawked head was kicked away like a beach ball. And she didn't stop when Uubu's murderer reached for her.

A moment later the woods were silent once again.

ooo

Akira unfolded his legs and stood up, stretching his aching limbs and wishing for coffee. His brow furrowed as he tried to remember whether or not he'd fallen asleep. He had been meditating, but he had the impression that his fatigue might have caught up with him again; it was getting harder and harder to stay awake. In the previous two weeks he'd gotten less than ten total hours of sleep, it was far from pleasant and he knew he couldn't keep it up. His whole body ached and his mind was clouded all the time; he often caught himself dreaming with his eyes open, seeing imaginary images superimposed over the real world.

He looked off in the distance and tried to sense his friends. He thought he could feel Pan and a couple other people, but he wasn't really sure if it was them; his fatigued mind and body were unable to summon the concentration necessary to focus in on a particular ki signature or identify one at a distance.

The young Saiyan rubbed his eyes and headed for a nearby stream, hopping into the freezing water before he could talk himself out of it. His whole body tightened up in the cold, but he felt awake for the first time in over twenty-four hours. Not bothering to dry off or warm up for fear of letting the stupor claim him again, he headed over to the area he used for training and started working on his new technique.

He focused on his ki and began trying to mold a part of his life force into a new body. Piccolo had used the multi form technique several times during their sparring sessions on King Kai's planet, but the young man had never bothered to learn it. To his knowledge Goku hadn't ever used it either, which explained why it was such a pain in the butt to learn. Akira could easily pick up anything his 'creator' had done, but new skills weren't as easy; and with no one to show him how to do it, he was forced to blindly grope in the dark for the correct path.

He had asked Vegeta about the technique once while he was living at Capsule Corp, but the older Saiyan had scoffed at the idea of learning it, claiming that it was a worthless skill. The problem with the technique, Vegeta had explained, was that it divided your strength and made you easier to defeat. In theory you could use it to attack an enemy from two sides at once, but any warrior who could be beaten by such simple tactics would be easily beaten without using such an attack. At the time the young man had seen the truth in Vegeta's words, now he wished he'd gone to Tien or Krillin to get them to teach him anyway.

Akira tried to remember how it felt when Piccolo used it, he'd also seen Tien use it during the Tenkaichi Budoukia, but that had resulted in three Tiens and the young man didn't want to make things more complicated than it already was.

He focused harder, forcing part of his ki away from himself, while trying to form it into a reflection of his own body. And then he felt it happen; Akira quickly opened his eyes and looked at his creation. He frowned in disappointment.

The Akira standing next to him was a bit overweight looking and didn't seem to have much cohesiveness; its body was almost transparent in areas.

The original Akira swore under his breath, this was a lot harder than he'd thought it would be. He knew if some one would just show him how it was done, and if he could sleep for about a week so that his brain would function properly, he could probably pull it off easily, but that was out of the question. He didn't plan on ever seeing the others unless it was to protect them. The idea of learning the multiform technique had come from his desire for some sort of training partner, but after three days of struggle the best he could do was form a fat ghost of himself.

_'Not that it really matters,'_ he thought dejectedly, _'I'm so tired, I doubt I'm even strong enough to hold Super Saiyan Three. What point is there in training if I'm too tired to move?'_ Unfortunately, sleep wasn't an option for the foreseeable future. The young man sighed, closed his eyes and tried again.

An hour and several failed attempts later, Akira was curled up in the fetal position, fast asleep. His body had finally rebelled against him and simply shut down; forcing him to get some of the rest he'd been denying himself for so long.

o

o

A/N: Well, what did you think? I hope you liked it, despite the unpleasant scenes. I actually already have the other chapter mostly finished also, so you can expect it sometime this weekend, probably on Saturday. Thanks for all the reviews, you guys rock!


	19. The Losses Mount

**Chapter Nineteen: The Losses Mount**

o

Trunks awoke to a painful headache; he reached up and touched the back of his head gingerly, grimacing as he felt the large lump. He swore under his breath and climbed to his feet. It was as he stood that he remembered the reason he was in the woods: Bra was in trouble!

He turned around in circles, trying to figure out where she and Uubu were, but he couldn't sense either of them. He could feel Krillin and Tien's life force and so he ran at full speed in the opposite direction, hoping that Bra and Uubu were still in the same spot, but also dredding what it would mean if they were.

He'd been running for just over a minute when he tripped over what he thought was a large stone. Trunks turned and looked down at the 'rock' and felt his stomach churn.

He had tripped over Uubu's severed head.

Trunks eyes filled with tears of grief and rage. The look on UUbu's face was one of shock and pain; in that moment, as he stared at the head, Trunks knew what he could expect when he found his sister. Still, he had to see it for himself, even though he really didn't want to. His hands trembled as he carefully picked up the head and cradled it in his arms. And then he took of running again, trying not to think of what he was holding or what was waiting for him up ahead.

Only seconds later the lavender haired Saiyan stepped through some bushes and into a clearing. His screams of anguish caused the birds in the surrounding area to take flight and head to a quieter island.

ooo

Krillin's hurried to the window and stared outside as he heard the scream from the woods. His first reaction was to rush out and see what was happening, but after Uubu and Trunks' power levels had suddenly vanished, he didn't want to run into a trap or leave Kumo undefended. The former monk looked up at Tien, who had joined him at the window; the bald fighter let out a loud frustrated sigh and nodded.

"We have to stay here," Tien said through clenched teeth, obviously not liking the words coming out of his mouth. "We can't afford to go running into another trap."

Krillin glanced over his shoulder at Kumo who was focused on playing with Master Roshi's toe hair. The old man was sitting in a large chair, his hands on his walking stick while his brows furrowed in concentration. He completely ignored all around him, all of his senses focused on the woods.

"Trunks is still alive," the turtle hermit declared, "but I fear we've lost Uubu and Bra."

The news was greeted with silence from the warriors and a curious look from Kumo who had perked up at the names of two of his favorite people in the house that didn't answer to the name "daddy." The little boy didn't understand what was happening or even the seriousness of the situation, but he could tell that something was wrong with the adults and knew enough to be quiet until someone took him outside to play.

ooo

"Wat the hell happened?!?" Vegeta screamed at King Kai. "What happened to my daughter?"

King Kai couldn't bring himself to respond, they all knew what had happened. They'd felt Uubu's life force vanish and then a few seconds later Bra's had disappeared as well. Nothing could be sensed around them, which meant Vegeta's killer had been the one to finish them off. For the briefest of moments they had thought Trunks had been killed as well, but then the kai had realized that the young man was only unconscious.

"Vegeta..." Piccolo began, but the Saiyan Prince cut him off.

"Shut up Namek! I won't have you trying to comfort me or calm me down while my family is being wiped out!" Then he turned back to King Kai, "Could you feel Akira when Bra was being killed? Where was he?"

King Kai shook his head, "I haven't felt anything from Akira in several earth weeks."

"So it could have been him? Possessed or...on his own," the Saiyan scowled, "I should have killed him. I let my feelings for the boy get in the way and now my children are paying for my foolishness."

"We don't know that it's him," Piccolo interjected, "Killing him wouldn't necessarily have changed anything that happened."

"Or it might have completely prevented everything that's happened today," Vegeta replied with a snarl.

"You'd really sacrifice a possibly innocent young man, one who was like a son to you, just on the _chance_ that it might have prevented a future crime?" the Namekian warrior asked incredulously.

"Akira was no son of mine, he was just someone to train with," the Saiyan spat, though in his heart he wasn't sure if the words were really true, "and I would do anything, ANYTHING to protect my family." The two warriors glared at each other, their auras beginning to crackle around them. Neither backed down, but neither attacked either.

King Kai decided that he'd better intervene before his planet was destroyed again. "Guys, calm down. Akira is still alive and there's nothing that can be done to change that at the moment. You two beating each other to a pulp won't help anything." The fighters powered down, but did not stop staring at each other.

"If we see Akira again, both of you had best stay out of my way. I don't care if he was possessed, if he was the one that killed my daughter, I'll crush him," Vegeta said as he stalked to the other side of the small planet and began doing one finger handstand pushups.

Piccolo and King Kai looked at each other and sighed.

"Do you think it was him?" Piccolo asked.

"I wish I could say no, but with Vegeta and now Uubu dead, the two strongest fighters on the planet, besides Akira, have been beaten and I don't know if Uubu even landed a blow. We'll have to ask him when he gets here, but I don't see how anyone other than Akira could have done something like that. It's more of a question about whether or not he was possessed when he did it, or if he's acting on his own," King Kai looked at the ground and closed his eyes behind his sunglasses, "I'm beginning to wish that I'd just read his mind when I had the chance."

"Why would he have asked Vegeta to kill him if he was doing it on his own?"

"That is the only reason I still have hope that there will somehow be a happy ending to all of this," King Kai whispered.

"There won't be a happy ending," a soft voice said behind them as a powerful life force appeared on the planet. The former kami of Earth and the overseer of the northern quadrant of the galaxy turned to see a scowling Uubu standing next to the house. "Akira did it and he didn't look very possessed to me."

ooo

Trunks fell to his knees as his scream died down, his lungs had forced him to stop yelling and start breathing again, but he couldn't take his eyes off of the sight before him. His sister was hanging from a tall tree; her body stripped naked and split wide open from her neck to her navel. Most of her organs had slipped out and were lying in a large pile of bloody gore on the forest floor below her.

This time, Trunks could not control his gag reflex; he turned his head to the side and threw up violently. He spit out the last of the bile and turned back to the sight, his hands digging into the dirt as they involuntarily clenched. With another scream, his golden arua exploded around him for a moment and then faded, leaving the grieving young man kneeling in a large crater.

_'I failed you again Bra, and this time it cost you your life,'_ he thought, _'but I swear this to you, I will not rest until you and our parents have been avenged.'_ He stood and set Uubu's head next to the rest of his body. Trunks' mind felt strangely clear and calm after his initial burst of rage. His brain was automatically pushing his feelings aside so he could focus on the last two things that were keeping him from the insanity that was threatening to take hold of him. He would kill that man that did this and he would protect Icalla to his last breath.

ooo

As night began to fall over the island, Gohan, Goten, and Trunks gathered the two bodies and took them to be buried at the same sight Vegeta, Bulma, and Chi-chi were buried. The two brothers were unnerved by the way that Trunks went about collecting his sister's remains and burying them without the slightest hint of emotion. They all tried comforting him, but he shrugged off their attempts and went about his work, speaking to no one.

ooo

Eighteen looked up in surprise as a soft knocking was heard at the door; she glanced at Videl and Icalla who were flipping through wedding guides while Marron and a recently-turned-blonde Launch were watching TV.

"Did anyone order delivery?" the android asked.

"I wish!" Oolong called from the kitchen, "I could really go for a pizza."

Eighteen softly crept to the door, peered through the peephole, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Akira," she said in surprise as she pulled the door open. "What are you doing here?"

"I was in the area and just thought I'd check and see how everyone is doing," the young man replied with a smirk as he stepped inside.

o

o

A/N: Sorry this chapter is a little on the short side and long on the gross side. But at least it had an annoying cliff hanger, right? I know, I know, everyone says cliff hangers are evil, but their also one of the reasons that we click the 'next chapter' button or read one more chapter in a real book even though we said that the last one we were reading was the last one. I actually really love to write them, they make the story more exciting in my opinion. Just a little heads up, the next update probably won't happen until next close to next weekend unless something unexpected happens. Anyway, send me a review and let me know what you think.

Toni the Mink: I don't know if Uubu would have that ability to regenerate or not. In the end figured that he was more human than freaky bubblegum monster, so sadly Uubu is as dead as one can get. As far as the website thing is concerned, you have my permission to do whatever you want. I doubt I'd find time to do it anytime soon so if you want to make one, by all means, be my guest. Just make sure you let me know what the wed address is so I can see it.

Draco the Destroyer: I wish I got a three day weekend...sadly, neither my work nor my school recognize Columbus as being worthy of a day off. I personally think anything that might be a holiday to someone, somewhere should be taken off in the spirit of...well, laziness.

Anouk: Unfortunately (or not), Pan isn't going to be able to accept Akira's guilt unless she gets some indisputable evidence. Most people have trouble accepting a loved one's guilt in small things...accepting that your boyfriend is a serial killer would be a bit tougher still, I'd think.

Everyone else: Thanks for all the compliments and encouragement. I'm glad that no one has seemed too put off by the gore, those scenes are coming to an end (mostly because I'm running low on horrible ways for people to die and also because I'm running out of people to kill!).


	20. Gohan's Battle

**Chapter Twenty: Gohan's Battle**

o

A/N: I know I said it was going to be a while before the next update, but I had so much fun writing this chapter that it just seemed to come together a lot quicker than I'd expected.

o

Goten, Gohan, and Trunks had finished burying Bra and Uubu and were staring at the graves, feeling like they should say something, but not sure what. The sun had set and the sky was growing dark, but the three half-Saiyans couldn't take their eyes away from the five graves.

Finally Goten made a fist with one hand, brought it in front of his chest and placed his other hand over it, bowing the way he had before his fights as a child. "We will miss you," he whispered, "and we will never forget you."

Trunks and Gohan mimicked his actions, but Trunks whispered in a voice that the others could not hear, "I will avenge you...I won't rest until the one who did this is lying dead at my feet."

As he and the two brothers turned to head home, Trunks' cell phone rang. He looked at the ID and smiled slightly, the only person in the world that he wanted to talk to had called.

"Hey Icalla," he said as he answered it.

--Sorry to disappoint you lover boy, but Icalla's a little...busy at the moment, -- a deep voice replied.

Trunks' eyes went wide. "Who are you?" he growled.

--You'll know shortly, I've decided not to drag out my revenge anymore. The house of Vegeta falls tonight. By the way, you'd better hurry; a person can only lose so much blood before they can't be saved. Tell Goten Valese says 'hi'...or was it 'oh god I'm dying'? It was hard to make out with all the screaming.--

The phone clicked off and Trunks was instantly in the air, Goten and Gohan didn't know what was going on, but they took off after him.

"Gohan," Trunks yelled as the two Son boys caught up with him, "Go back to the island and get everyone, and I mean everyone. I'm not taking a chance that this is another of this guys attempts to get us all split up so he can pick off any weak fighters. Once you have everyone bring them to the Parsley Town.

Gohan knew exactly what that meant: the girls were in danger. He veered off and headed for the island with a huge burst of speed as he ascended to the next level. He pulled out his cell phone and was about to call Pan when it rang. He answered without even looking to see who was calling.

"Hello?" he asked.

--Gohan! Stay away. It was Ak-- Videl's voice was suddenly cut off and a new one replaced it.

--Hello Gohan, why don't you look down?—

The Saiyan scholar instinctively did as he was told; his eyes widened in horror as he saw a dark figure holding a struggling woman that looked exactly like his wife. Gohan dropped out of the sky as the figure stepped out of the shadows. The Saiyan's breath caught in his throat.

"No..."

ooo

Pan felt Trunks power up and head away from her father and uncle; a moment later the other two Saiyans were chasing after him.

_'What are they doing?'_ she wondered. The day had been filled with so much death and turmoil her brain just couldn't keep up with it. She felt numb all over, the universe no longer made any sense and she couldn't figure out when or why it had been flipped on its head. Her best friends were dead. Bra and Uubu were dead. Dende and everyone at the Lookout were dead. Vegeta, Bulma and her grandmother were dead. Akira had been missing for weeks and might be a murderer. It was like something out of the twilight zone.

She shook her head and tried to order her thoughts, to keep them from crashing around her in a chaotic mess.

A small tug on her pants brought her back to reality. She looked down at little Kumo who looked so much like her uncle and grandfather had when they were kids.

"Daddy?" the toddler asked.

"He'll be home soon I'm sure," Pan replied, glad for the distraction.

"Oob?" the little boy pressed, the raven haired woman felt her heart break all over again. Kids shouldn't be exposed to this; they shouldn't have to learn about death before they can say the alphabet.

"I'm sorry, honey, Uubu...he...he had to go bye-bye," she struggled to think of a way to explain the concept without upsetting the child. "He went bye-bye for a long time...with Miss Bra...but someday we'll see them again."

The child cocked his head to the side in confusion, "We go bye-bye?" he asked hopefully.

Pan smiled sadly, "Not yet." _'Hopefully not for a long time.'_

ooo

Gohan couldn't believe his eyes. The sight in front of him was impossible. It was unthinkable. It was Akira.

The young man was standing behind Videl, his arm wrapped around her neck, making sure that Gohan had a clear view of the terror in her eyes.

"So Gohan, how have you been?"

"Akira, what are you doing?" the older Saiyan asked, his brain seemed to have shut down. It just couldn't grasp that what he was seeing was reality.

"Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm going to kill your wife right in front of your eyes and then I'll probably kill you. After that...well, most likely I'll move on to Pan or one of the other monkeys, but I'll figure that out when I get there," he smiled happily. "I was going to drag things out, but I've begun to grow restless...so I'm speeding up the timetable on the Arlean's revenge."

"Akira...let's talk about this...this isn't you," Gohan took a tentative step towards the young man,

"I know you; you wouldn't hurt those that you love-"

"Don't think that you know anything about me or who I love! The Saiyan's are butchers! I have no love for them."

"You're being controlled or something, but you can fight it," Gohan said taking another step forward.

"You really are dense, aren't you? I'm not being controlled; I've been this way since the day I came into this world." His arm tightened around Videl, causing her to gag, "If you don't want to see your pretty little whore lose her head, I suggest you stay where you are."

Gohan froze. "What do you want?" he asked.

"I want to see the horror and grief in your eyes when your wife dies, and after that, I want to see you die," his smile became and evil smirk, "Oh, and by the way, she was going to die anyway, so you didn't need to stop moving."

"No!" The Saiyan scholar screamed when he saw the other man's arm tighten and his wife's eye bulge as the pressure on her neck began to increase. Gohan shot forward and vanished, reappearing behind the younger warrior and throwing a might punch at his head. Suddenly, the murderer spun and brought Videl up in front of him.

Gohan tried to stop the punch, but he had so much momentum behind the attack, that it was too late to pull out. His fist struck his wide-eyed wife, crushing her skull. Gohan's world came to a screeching halt. He landed and stared at his gore covered hand.

"Oh Kami..." he whispered in a trembling voice.

"Tisc tisc," a mocking voice said, "Didn't see that coming did you?" Gohan looked up at the young man, his eyes filled with grief and pain. The murderer put his hands on either side of the pulp that used to be Videl's face and gave it a hard twist, spinning the head 360 degrees before tossing body aside.

"I'm going to kill you," Gohan said quietly as an awesome power began to surge through him.

"Ah yes, the your infamous 'Hidden Power.' I've always wanted to see it, but sadly I'll never see what it's really capable of. You see, your hidden power doesn't make you unbeatable, it can only increase your abilities so much and..." he shot and leveled Gohan with a vicious punch, "...you haven't been training enough for it to make up the difference between us. That's what you get for not walking in your father's footsteps."

Gohan landed on his feet, but quickly flipped back up to his feet, his golden aura exploded around him as he ascended to the second level.

ooo

Goten and Trunks' heads whipped around as they felt Gohan's power flare up; Goten stopped, but Trunks kept going.

"Trunks! Wait, we need to help him!" Goten shouted.

"It'll take us fifteen minutes to get to him," the lavender haired Saiyan replied, finally stopping.

"It'll only take us five to get to the girls' house...They need us more at the moment. As soon as we know they're safe we'll come back for him."

"But..."

"What do you think Gohan would want us to do?" Trunks shouted.

Goten still seemed torn, but he nodded and the two of them continued towards Parsley Town.

ooo

Pan looked up from the puzzle she was helping Kumo with. She could feel her father's power drastically increasing, even going past the point that she had thought was his peak. Her muscles tightened, readying her to rush to his aid. Trunks and Goten were closer to him, but they weren't heading towards him. She almost stood, but Kumo distracted her by pulling on her sleeve and proudly displaying that he had managed to get two of the enormous puzzle pieces linked together.

Pan forced her muscles to relax slightly, _'I have to stay here. Every time someone goes running off alone or we split up too much another person ends up dead. Dad's a great fighter; he'll be able to last until Uncle Goten and Trunks get to him.'_ She wasn't sure if she really believed the last part, but she knew she couldn't rush off to help him, she had to be responsible.

She turned back to the puzzle and patted Kumo on the head, telling him he was very smart, but her attention was still on her father.

ooo

"This won't be like the Tenchiaki Bouduki. I won't hold back at all against you, even if it costs me my life," Gohan growled, his golden aura swirling around him.

The young man smirked, "For being the 'smart one,' you sure are an idiot. You've never fought anyone like me."

The Super Saiyan didn't bother to reply; he shot forward with incredible speed and slammed his knee into the smirking man's face. The younger warrior staggered back a few steps; Gohan vanished and then reappeared behind him. With a surge of power, he landed a spinning kick that sent his enemy into a hill, cracking the large mound of dirt in half.

Gohan threw his hand in front of him and fired a large ki blast at the hill, a huge mushroom cloud erupted from ground zero as the surrounding trees and grass turned to ash. A second later, the younger warrior flew out of the side of the cloud looking slightly singed, but basically unharmed; just as he cleared the smoke; Gohan appeared above him and brought his elbow down hard on the other fighter's head. The warrior hit the ground hard and lay still for a moment.

The Super Saiyan landed a short distance away, brought his hands behind his head and then threw them forward as he yelled, "Masenko-Ha!"

The ground where the younger man had landed exploded. Gohan kept up the attack by throwing dozens of smaller blasts, increasing the destruction done by the Masenko blast.

As the smoke from the second round of ki attacks began to dissipate, a golden light shown out from the blast zone. Gohan's eyes widened in surprise, standing in an enormous crater was the young man, his now golden hair standing straight up. Other than his torn clothes, and a few trickles of blood running from his nose and mouth, he seemed perfectly healthy.

Gohan stared at the golden warrior in horror, his lungs burning as he sucked air into them; he couldn't believe that he'd done so little damage after pouring so much power into his attacks. The young man looked up at him and smiled, motioning with his hand for the Saiyan to resume his attacks.

The older warrior shot straight at him and hit him several times in the face, snapping the murderer's head back and forth like a punching bag. When his opponent seemed sufficiently dazed, Gohan drove his knee into the man's gut and then threw a vicious uppercut that sent the warrior onto his back. Gohan stood over him and glared at the fighter.

The young man began to laugh.

"Is that it?" he asked through his giggles. "That's the great 'hidden power' of Gohan?"

The Super Saiyan growled and tried to step on the laughing warrior's face, but his foot was caught a fraction of an inch before it landed. With a quick kick, the younger fighter swept Gohan's other leg out from under him.

Both warriors immediately leapt to their feet and stared at each other.

"You know what the problem is with your power?" the young man asked. "It doesn't last. You're a sprinter, but this is a distance race. The only time you've managed to hold onto that extra burst is when you achieve a new level and you aren't there this time."

"We'll just see about that," Gohan said as he flew forward, his fist cocked and ready to strike.

The young man's hair suddenly became slightly longer and more chiseled looking as he pushed his power to the next level. He ducked and dodged as Gohan threw hundreds of punches at lightening fast speed. The oldest living Saiyan tried using kicks as well, but they were easily brushed aside by his powerful opponent.

Gohan knew he was being toyed with and it enraged him. Thoughts of Videl and Chi-chi raced through his mind. Here was the man who had caused his family so much pain and he was powerless to hit him. The anger pushed even more power into his limbs and his speed increased, a few of his attacks almost getting through the younger man's defenses.

"You're so close. A little bit more and I think you'd probably ascend," the young man said, "but I'm afraid I can't allow that to happen; not that I couldn't still beat you, it would just take more energy than I want to spend. I have a long night ahead of me."

In an instant a fist shot through Gohan's defenses and slammed into his face. The Super Saiyan took a few staggered steps back and then reared back and threw another punch.

His fist was caught before it had crossed half the distance between him and his opponent. With a quick jerk of his arm, the young man pulled Gohan close to him and drove his knee into the older fighters gut.

Gohan coughed up blood and a second later his head was snapped back by a powerful uppercut. The Super Saiyan started to fall back, but a hand shot out and grabbed him by his shirt. He was pulled forward once again and then stars exploded in front of his eyes as the younger warrior head butted him several times in the face.

As the vicious murderer continued to batter the barely conscious Gohan with his forehead, he brought his free hand back and began charging a ki blast. Still holding onto the older Saiyan's shirt, he threw his powered up fist forward, landing both a punch and a powerful ki blast in one move.

Gohan was sent plowing through the ground before coming to a rest not far from Videl's broken body; he lay very still for a long time.

ooo

Pan felt her father's life force drop down to almost nothing and was on her feet in an instant. She threw open the door that Tien had installed to replace the one Trunks had broken earlier that day, ripping it off its hinges in her haste.

"Wait Pan! Come back!" Krillin hollered after her as she shot into the sky.

_'Responsibility be damned,'_ she thought as she became a Super Saiyan, _'I'm not losing my father!'_

ooo

Gohan groaned and pulled himself to his feet. He wished he could say he felt like he'd been hit by a truck, but the truth was, he felt much, much worse. He turned, looking for his enemy, and nearly fell over at the sight that greeted him. The young man was sitting on the ground, reclining against a large rock, with his head on his chest. He looked like he had fallen asleep.

A moment later the snoozing warrior yawned and stretched glancing up at Gohan with a contented look upon his face.

"Oh, you're awake," he said almost cheerfully. "I was wondering how long you'd be out." He climbed to his feet and took up a fighting stance, "Well, I guess it's time to end this." He brought his hands to his side and began charging a large ki blast.

Gohan's eyes widened as he realized what was coming. He quickly brought his hands together, moved them to his hip and chanted, "Ka Me Ha Me..."

His hands flew forward and a massive, blue ki blast leapt from them as he screamed, "Ha!"

The young man likewise brought his his hands up and yelled, "Fukushuu!"

A smaller, green blast shot from his palms and met Gohan's blast half way between them. The two attacks formed a large swirling ball of aquamarine energy as both fighters poured more and more power into them. For a while it seemed like a stalemate and then slowly Gohan's blast began pushing forward.

_'This is for you dad,'_ the scholar thought as he put everything into the attack, even parts of his life force that he needed to survive. He knew the kind of strength he was up against and he knew that he was unlikely to survive, but if he could take Akira with him, at least the others would be safe.

Just as the ball of ki was about to hit the younger man's hands, the murderer powered up, his hair ran down his back, his eyebrows receded and his attack began quickly overpowering Gohan's.

Gohan's hands shook as he tried with all his might to regain control of the power struggle, but he simply didn't have anything left. His blue Kamehameha faltered and vanished as he brought up his hands in a desperate attempt to block the oncoming ki blast.

_'I'm sorry Videl...Pan...I failed,'_ he thought as the green beam struck his chest.

o

o

A/N: Well, another chapter, another couple of deaths, plus Pan's running toward the trouble. Let me know what you think.

Toni the Mink: Cool, I look forward to seeing the poster. The real fallout from the discovery of the safe house will be seen in the next chapter.

Erica: Sorry, you asked for all those people to survive and I already killed one of them off!

Legend: The killer has mentioned the Arleans a few times, but usually the people who hear it are dead before they can get around to dissecting the conversation.

Midnight46: Thanks for reading all that in just a week! I'm glad that you've enjoyed it all. Don't worry about Vegeta dying, he's still going to be around and even have another shot at Akira before too long.

Everyone else: Thanks for all the reviews. For those of you who want to see Trunks, Goten, etc survive...Well; let's just say things will eventually get better, just not right away. A couple of people mentioned that Trunks seems to be getting tortured pretty bad and looking back on it, you're all right. Fun, huh?


	21. Revealed?

**Chapter Twenty-One: Revealed?**

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A/N: This chapter should definitely be considered 'R,' a very strong 'R' in fact. There is a lot of death and one very sad, very gruesome murder (it'll be the last of the chapter). After writing that one death I almost threw out the whole scene (actually, I was almost physically sick because I was picturing the scene in my mind while writing it), but I think it has to be there unfortunately. If you haven't caught on yet (and I hope most of you have), things are going badly for our heroes; in this chapter they're going to get a lot worse.

o

The street outside the safe house that the Z-Fighters had set up for their wives and children was lit by only one street light. Goten and Trunks dropped silently to the ground in the middle of the dark street and looked around. There didn't seem to be any threats waiting for them outside, but with all the shadows being created by the lone street light and their own golden auras any number of enemies could be hiding all around them and they wouldn't know until an attack came. The two powerful warriors' muscles were tight in anticipation, ready to spring into action at the first hint of trouble. They'd felt Gohan fall and Pan begin heading towards her father. As much as they wanted to go back and try to save Gohan, they knew they had to see if there was anything that could be done here first.

Trunks scanned the area and then his eyes locked onto the door to the safe house, it was wide open. The older Super Saiyan nudged his friend and received a nod in reply. The two crept towards the house and quickly ducked inside.

ooo

Pan felt her father's life force vanish and put on a new burst of speed, her face set with grim determination. She didn't have much further to go, but she feared it would already be too late.

_'Why didn't Uncle Goten or Trunks come to help him?'_ she wondered as she sliced through the air. _'The must have felt him fighting, they should have been with him!'_

Her confusion over Trunks and Goten's actions slipped from her mind as she caught sight of the battle scarred ground just ahead of her. Pan landed and began searching the area.

"Dad?" she yelled, "Dad, where are you?"

There was no reply from the darkness around her. After several minutes of search, she noticed two lumps barely visible by the light of her golden aura. Pan hurried towards the lumps and then, as she drew closer to the two bodies and was able to make out their identities, her insides seemed to freeze and her world fell apart.

Pan's golden hair became black as she fell to the ground next to her parents mangled bodies, curled up into the fetal position and sobbed uncontrollably.

ooo

Trunks flipped on the light switch and almost wished that he hadn't. Directly in front of the two Saiyans, Android 18 lay in a pool of blood. Her right arm had been blown off along with a large chunk of that side of her chest; there was a small hole in her forehead, but the back of her head had been completely blown out, as if her killer had fired the ki blast from extremely close range.

Trunks and Goten turned from the sight of the body of the once beautiful blonde woman and began examining the rest of the room.

Puar and Oolong seemed to have been given quick and easy deaths, both bodies were lying in the middle of the room, but seemed to have just had their necks broken. Deaths that were about as mercifully quick and painless as this killer seemed capable of giving.

Just beyond them, Marron was lying face down with a large, still-smoking hole in her back. Apparently she'd tried to run at some point and had been promptly executed.

Near the kitchen the two men could see Launch, in her blonde haired persona. There was a broken machine gun lying next to her and another one that had been stuck through her stomach, pinning her to the wall. It was hard to say how long she'd hung there before finally succumbing to death, but both men were sure her death had been slow and painful.

It was as they headed further back into the house that they found the two sights that they had been both dreading and expecting from the moment they saw the open door. Icalla and Valese were lying side by side on the floor of one of the bedrooms, their eyes wide with terror and clouded over in death.

Icalla's neck had been slit and there was a large gaping hole in her chest that had not been created by a ki blast. Several of the bones in her arms and legs were twisted and bent in unnatural positions; her murderer had either tortured her before killing her, or had mutilated her body afterwards. Trunks prayed that it was the second possibility, the thought of her dying because she'd known him nearly drove him insane, but the idea that she'd been tortured first was simply unbearable.

Valese's body was in just as bad condition. Like Icalla, her arms and legs had been broken in multiple places. Her stomach had been sliced open, her intestines pulled out and strewn about the room, and her throat had been torn out.

Goten fell to his knees and pulled his wife's bloody body to him, rocking her back and forth while he sobbed. The world around him disappeared and the only thing he knew was the small, broken form in his arms.

Trunks' eyes were cold and his face expressionless, after losing his sister and parents he had decided that he was no longer going to cry or morn, not until he had ripped the bastard who'd done it limb from limb. On the inside he felt exactly as Goten did, his heart was broken, his world had ended, but he wouldn't let himself fall apart until he'd had his revenge.

The older of the two warriors knelt and gently ran his hand over Icalla's face, closing her empty eyes and then began to scan the blood covered walls while his friend grieved over his loss. There were a few things written in blood, but one in particular caught his attention: 'The Infant is next.'

"Goten," Trunks said, placing a hand on his friends shoulder, trying to bring him back to the real world. "Goten, look at this."

The youngest of Goku's children did not answer or even look up.

"Goten!" Trunks screamed. Goten looked up at him with blank eyes and didn't answer. "She's gone; we were too late to help them."

The blank stare remained, Goten didn't move.

"He's going after Kumo next."

Goten still didn't say anything, but a fire lit in his eyes. He gently set Valese down, closed her eyes, and then followed Trunks outside. The two Super Saiyans shot into the air and sped towards the island.

Only a few minutes into their flight, they felt Pan's power dip down; it didn't vanish the way it would have it she were suppressing it or died, but she was clearly no longer in her Super Saiyan form.

"Maybe you should go see if she needs help," Goten suggested, "You could just meet me at the house once you have her."

"No," Trunks replied, closing his eyes as he concentrated on Pan's life force, "She's not fighting anyone, she just powered down. We need to get to the house as quickly as possible if we're going to be any good to Kumo and the others. Besides, there's something at the house that I think I'm going to need before we run into this bastard anyway."

Goten gave him a quizzical look, but didn't say anything else. He hoped that Pan would be safe, but he knew that he had to get to Kumo before he could check up on her.

ooo

It took them almost a half hour to get to the island; during the rest of their flight, neither had said a word. Both knew that with an enemy as fast as theirs and the fact that he had a head start, there was little chance that they'd catch him before he reached the island. Their only thread of hope was that they still hadn't felt any sort of power up from any of the remaining Z-Fighters. The two landed in front of the large house, the lights were all on, bathing areas of the grass in soft light, but the door was open and there were no noises coming from inside. Goten and Trunks quickly ran inside.

They were barely three steps into the house when they saw Krillin and Yamcha's dead bodies, both with looks of surprise and fear in their open eyes. Trunks began looking around; quickly spotting the bodies of Tien and Chiaotzu, Tien appeared to have been protecting his small friend until the end. Behind a couch, Trunks found Master Roshi, he was lying face down with his walking stick rammed into the back of his skull.

The last of the royal family continued to explore, but saw no signs of Kumo. He glanced across the room and could see the pain and fear in the eyes of his friend. Goten had to know that chances were slim that his little boy, his pride and joy, was still alive. The bodies that they had found were already starting to cool; they'd probably been dead for nearly an hour. The two Saiyans searched the rest of the house, but still found nothing; as they headed back downstairs they heard a small yelp that sounded just like the brown haired toddler coming from outside.

They were at the door in an instant and then froze. They could just make out the sight of Kumo, struggling unsuccessfully against a man dressed in black whose face was hidden in the shadows.

"Give me back my son!" Goten demanded shooting forward. An instant before he reached the dark man and his hostage, the two of them vanished and reappeared a short distance away.

"I want you to know that your deaths tonight are inevitable. In fact, I wouldn't have bothered letting you live this long, but I wanted to see the look on Goten's face when I do this!" He grabbed the frightened little boy under the chin and tore his head off.

Goten's sanity vanished. He screamed in unthinking horror as his son's body was tossed aside like a piece of trash; the enraged Saiyan lunged forward, but again, the murderer had moved before he could even land a blow.

"I've taken everything from both of you. Your parents, your siblings, your loved ones, and now Goten's child," the man stepped forward, slowly coming into the light, "The Saiyan race will fall tonight and then those who have suffered because of them will finally be at peace.

Goten, even in his insanity, gasped and Trunks' face hardened as they looked upon the smirking face of Akira. The young man put his fingers to his forehead and disappeared.

ooo

Pan was wallowing in a world of darkness, her grief had completely taken hold of her and there was no end in sight. If she'd had the means or even just the ability to think clearly enough, she probably would have considered taking her own life. As she continued to sob uncontrollably she suddenly became aware that she was no longer lying on the ground. She looked up with tear reddened eyes and found herself in the strong arms of Akira.

Tears were streaming down his face as he held her and whispered, "I'm so sorry Pan."

Nothing could have made things better for Pan, nothing could have fixed the brokenness that she felt; but his presence, the fact that he was here for her when she needed him most, helped her hold onto the last strand of her sanity.

She closed her eyes and continued to cry, but her sobs were quieter now, more controlled. She leaned her head against his chest and felt the warmth radiating off of him, bringing her some comfort in her grief.

The young man looked down at her, his eyes suddenly dry, and an evil grin formed on his face.

o

o

A/N: Okay, first things first, I am really, really, really sorry about the scene with Kumo. Maybe you won't see it as any worse than Uubu's death, but to me the killing of a child is about as low as you can go. I hope that no one was too upset by it. Like I said at the beginning of the chapter, the scene was almost cut because I hated that I'd even written it, however, I needed to get Goten to the same point that Trunks is at so that when they get to their battle they can be as powerful and ruthless as possible. The midway point of the story (perhaps not length wise, but at least story wise) is coming up in about two or three chapters. After that point, things will start looking up for some of our heroes (hard to look much worse than they do now) and we'll know some of what's been going on behind the scenes during these events.

Toni the Mink: Sorry about your character getting killed off. She'll make some more appearances though before it's all said and done. I liked the poster you made a lot and I'm not freaked out by how much you like the story, it's nice to be appreciated.

Nadz: I tried to make it clear with the Akira's one 'real' scene in the last couple of chapters that he was just messed up. He can't think, can't focus, and doesn't think he could even power up even close to his max anymore. I won't really say too much more a long these lines so as not to give away the killers identities, but it will only be one more chapter (I think) before you know.

Tzeron: Gohan will still get a little more action before the story comes to a close; I'm not really sure how big of part he'll play though. I have everything laid out for the next three or four chapters, but after that I only have a general idea of where it's all going. If the 'muses' decide that Gohan is to be the hero, then I'll write it that way; if not...well, I'll see what I can do.

Draco the Destroyer: I don't think I could live with myself either. That whole scene with Videl and Gohan just sort of popped in my head while I was writing it and I thought, 'wow, what a terrible thing to do to someone; use his own fist to kill his wife.' I was rather impressed with my creativity is a disturbed sort of way.

Everyone looking for Trunks to finally get his hands on Akira (or whoever it is that's doing this): Your wait is almost over. One more chapter and then it's here.


	22. Comfort and Murder

**Chapter Twenty-Two: Comfort and Murder**

o

Pan couldn't remember how long she'd been in Akira's arms, but just having him close brought her a small measure of comfort as she sobbed over the loss of her parents. She couldn't bring herself to look back at where their bodies lay, she'd seen it once and that was enough for now. Her uncontrollable weeping slowed, though the tears continued to fall.

"Can I take you somewhere else?" Akira's voice whispered softly to her.

"I...uh, I don't...I mean...we need to..." her voice trailed off without ever forming an intelligible sentence.

"You don't need to see this anymore," his gentle voice told her, "We'll go get some coffee and talk; then we'll go get Trunks and Goten, they can help us finish things once and for all."

Pan looked up into his kind eyes and warm, caring smile; her own eyes were full of confusion and heartache. She gave him a sad smile and nodded, trusting him to do what was best for her until she could think clearly enough to function.

The young man put two fingers to his forehead and the two Saiyan's vanished.

ooo

"How can it be him...I mean why would Akira do this?" Goten asked, still shaking with rage as he held the body of his son. He still couldn't believe what he'd seen anymore than he could believe that his beautiful wife and child were gone forever.

"We'll ask him after we've beaten the shit out of him," Trunks replied coldly.

"But this is Akira...I mean, he's a Super Saiyan 5. We aren't strong enough to beat him..."

"Wait here," the lavender haired Saiyan said as he ran into the house. A moment later he was back, carrying a capsule.

"What's that?" Goten asked.

"Our trump card," Trunks said with a grim look on his face, "Goten, do you remember the Fusion Dance?"

ooo

Akira and Pan appeared in an empty dark alley in Satan City.

The young woman looked around in confusion. "How did you do that?" she asked, her brain seemed to work as long as she wasn't thinking about her murdered family.

"What?"

"How did you use Instant Transmission to get somewhere without anyone around? I thought you needed to sense a life force to use that."

"Oh, well, what do you think I've been doing for the last few weeks?" he smiled disarmingly. "I've been perfecting some of my techniques. I can use the Instant Transmission to go anywhere I can picture in my head, even if no one's around." He set her down, took her hand in his, and led her out of the alley and towards a Starbucks down the street.

Pan was so impressed with the new skill that she didn't notice one of the shadows move slightly as she passed it. She was happy just to be able to hold his hand, though after the events of that night, "happy" didn't mean the same thing that it used to; now it merely meant a tiny speck of light in a sea of darkness.

Moments later the two Saiyans were seated in a small booth, staring at the steaming cups in front of them. For a long time neither spoke. Without anything to distract her even momentarily, Pan had slipped back into thoughts of her parents and tears once again began to run down her face; her companion, waiting for her to give him a sign as to what he should do or say, gently took her hand and squeezed. The young woman didn't mind his silence, she was just glad that someone who loved her was there for her.

Finally Pan asked the question that had plagued her since the death of Vegeta and Bulma, "Akira, why is this happening? Why is this guy doing this?"

"It's revenge," he replied bluntly.

"Revenge? Why would someone want revenge on us?"

The young man took a sip of coffee and sighed, "The Saiyans killed a lot of people in the past. Someone out there hasn't forgiven that. As far as we know there are only two real Saiyan blood lines left, Vegeta's and Goku's, the killer is eliminating them."

"It's barbaric!" Pan said with a scowl, "None of us have done anything to deserve this."

"The Saiyans are the ones who were the barbarians... going from planet to planet wiping out whole species just for money," the young man's eye twitched slightly as he finished, a small frown appearing on his lips. He quickly took another sip of his coffee.

Pan looked at him in surprise, "How could you say something like that?"

"It's true, isn't it? Before Frieza killed most of them, the Saiyans went around destroying entire civilizations."

"Yeah, but none of us have done that," Pan pointed out, "Neither Goku nor Vegeta's descendants have done anything like that...in fact, Vegeta's the only one who ever acted that way and he changed a long time ago."

"Maybe the crimes of one's past aren't excused because they've changed later in life," there was a slight edge to the young man's voice, "and let's face it, even if none of the younger Saiyans have become killers, that doesn't mean they won't of that their children won't."

Pan was quiet for a moment and then said, "That might explain why someone would kill Vegeta...or maybe even the Saiyans, but why kill humans...why kill Zori and Stacy?

"He's just doing what it takes to get to the Saiyans...and maybe he sees humans that befriend or mate with Saiyans as accomplices."

Pan stared at him in confusion. _'Why is he talking like this?'_ she wondered, _'it's like he's defending the murderer.'_

She tried reaching out to him telepathically, something she hadn't really done since their baseball game date, and felt something...wrong. His actual thoughts were closed to her, but in addition to that, there was a thinly veiled hatred radiating from him.

"Why didn't you feel my dad's fight?" she asked, suddenly suspicious, but praying she was wrong. "You said you'd come if we needed held."

"I didn't need to feel the fight," he replied with a smile. "I was there."

Pan's eyes widened a second before a fist slammed into her face, sending her crashing through the tables and chairs and then out the side of the building. Customers and employees screamed in surprise and fear at the sudden explosion. The young man ignored them and stalked after his prey, a wicked grin on his face.

Pan shook her head, trying to stop the ringing in her ears and hoping that she'd wake up from a very bad dream. She looked up from the ruble she was lying in and watched as the powerful warrior calmly walked towards her. As her confusion began to dissipate, it was replaced by a fiery rage.

_'It was him all along,'_ she thought as her power level began to rise,_ 'He killed the Briefs, he killed Grandma, he killed Stacy and Zori, and he killed mom and dad!'_ With a scream of rage she ran forward, her fist cocked. Just before she could throw the punch, his hand shot out and backhanded her into a building on the other side of the street.

Pan pulled her self to her feet, powered up to Super Saiyan and charged him once again, giving no thought to strategy. A quick uppercut lifted her off her feet, and an open hand slap in the chest sent her skipping along the asphalt.

She once again climbed to her feet and looked up just as the young man stuck his hand in the ground, pulled out a large chunk of street and power lines, causing a power outage in the area, and then brought it down on her head. Pan dropped out of her Super Saiyan form and started running, thunder clapped overhead and rain began to fall.

Her feet pounded hard against the pavement as she ran along the dimly lit, empty street. The pouring rain soaked through her clothes, but it was not the cold water that chilled her, it was him.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was still chasing her, but at the moment, the distance between the two of them was increasing. The raven-haired girl rounded a corner and put on a new burst of speed. A moment later she spotted a darkened alley and, after chancing another look behind her, entered it—running straight into a rock solid body.

The force of the impact knocked her to the ground with a cry of surprise. Pan looked around helplessly, knowing that running was out of the question and hiding was impossible. Her only chance was to attack him again and pray to kami that he'd be caught off guard; it was a long shot, but it was all she had. With a surge of power she leapt to her feet and threw a hard punch at his head.

With lightening fast reflexes his hand shot up and caught her fist. He smiled sadistically as he crushed her hand with a sickening crunch. She screamed in pain.

"Now, now," the young man said with an evil chuckle, "That wasn't very nice." He pulled her forward by her destroyed hand and drove his knee into her stomach, "Things like that are why your people were so despised.

The woman fell to her knees, gasping for air and clutching the bloody lump of flesh and bone that had once been her hand; her attacker stared at her with cold ruthlessness in his eyes. His foot lashed out and sent her through the wall of a warehouse that made up part of the alley.

The dark haired woman rolled onto her stomach and gingerly pulled herself to her feet, warm, sticky blood flowed into her eyes from a long gash across her forehead. She hastily wiped the blood away with her good hand and tried to get her bearings.

"Looking for someone?" a harsh voice whispered from behind.

She spun and looked up at him wide eyed with fear. A vice-like hand clamped around her throat and lifted her off the ground effortlessly. Her one good hand struggled franticly to loosen his grip, but to no avail.

"W...why are...you doing...th...this?" she gasped. "I thought...you...lov...ed me." The already dark room was growing darker as she fought to stay conscious.

The man laughed. "Me? Love you? Hardly! You were just something for me to play with, nothing more. But now that the time as come for the Arlean's revenge, it's time to throw my toy away," he said and then dropped her onto the floor. By releasing her at that moment he'd allowed her to remain conscious, but he was not doing her a favor. He wanted her awake so she could feel helpless, betrayed, and terrified during the last moments of her life. It was the only way he could fully enjoy her death, the only way to make her suffer as she was supposed to.

The young woman looked up at him, tears running down her cheeks and splashing on the dirty, blood soaked ground.

Suddenly a golden light swirled around him, chasing the shadows from the room, his face contorted into a maniacal smile.

"Please," she begged as a ball of energy formed in his palm. "Please, Akira, don't do this."

The ki blast shot from his hand and nearly tore her in two; Pan hit the ground and did not move.

The young man looked down at her as the light surrounding his body faded and his hair became black again. His eyes seemed to twinkle as he knelt down and examined his handiwork; it had been everything he'd hoped for. "See you around Pan," he said. The man stood up, spat on her mortally wounded body, and then walked back into the shadows of the night.

ooo

On a cold, wind swept hill in the Yunzabit Heights, a young man thrashed about in his sleep as he struggled to break free from his slumber. His face was pale and there were large bags under his eyes.

Suddenly Akira's eyes snapped open as he felt Pan's life force begin to vanish. His fingers were at his forehead before he even sat up.

o

o

A/N: Ha ha! What do you think about that for an ending? Finally, after all this time, a pseudo-answer! Let me know what you think.


	23. The Price of Failure

**Chapter Twenty-Three: The Price of Failure**

o

Akira appeared in the darkened building and looked around in confusion. It took him a moment to spot Pan's broken, bleeding body, but when he did he was instantly at her side.

"Pan?" he asked, kneeling next to her and gently touching her bruised face. Her eyes remained closed in unconsciousness, he could feel her quickly slipping away. "Oh Kami! Pan, wake up honey...please, you have to hang on." He looked around frantically, trying to think of what he could do. He wasn't sure where he was in the city (or even what city he was in), so it didn't seem likely that he'd find a hospital in time, but if he didn't do something, Pan would be dead in moments.

He thought about picking her up, but one look at the large hole in her stomach told him that moving her would do as much harm as good. If he tried to move her she would die, if he left her where she was she would die; there was nothing that he could do.

He took her hand in his and squeezed it, "Please Pan. Please don't leave me," he whispered lowering his head to hers.

Even as the words left his lips, he felt her life force fade away. Akira pulled her onto his lap, kissing her bloodied forehead and rocking back and forth as he cried.

He'd failed her. Failed his friends. Failed everyone. Though his mind was far from focused enough to be sure, he couldn't feel any of the others; they could have all been wiped out while he'd been hiding in the mountains. He should have helped them or at least died with them, but instead he'd pushed them away. Their deaths were on his head, their blood on his hands. In the end he hadn't been the one killing them, but his fear and his refusal to seek help had left them one defender down. With his Instant Transmission alone he might have been able to help Pan or any of the others who had been killed.

He threw his head back and screamed in rage as his barrier fell away and his golden aura exploded around him. The whole city shook under the force of his power; and then as quickly as it had started, his aura faded away and the barrier returned.

Akira gently laid Pan's body on the ground and stood, his clothes were drenched in her blood. He touched his hand to the sticky crimson stain on his shirt and looked at it, his whole body shaking with rage once again.

_'Pan, I failed you...just like I failed when we fought Ammit. I wanted to keep you safe, but in the end I wasn't there when you needed me most,_' he let out a slow, calming breath, forcing himself to focus. _'I will find the one who did this and I'll pay back every hurt you felt a thousand times over...even if it kills me.'_

"So, you've sunk this low," Trunks' cold voice cut through Akira's thoughts. The young man spun and found Trunks and Goten standing in the rain, their faces a mask of cold fury, both sets of eyes were locked on Pan's body.

"Oh thank Kami you're still alive..." Akira's voice trailed off as a thought hit him. "Is anyone else left?" he asked quietly.

"You should know...you're the one that killed them all," Goten said angrily.

"What are you...no, no it wasn't me," the cold tendrils of fear suddenly gripped Akira's heart. He looked down at his shirt and then back at Pan, "Goten...Trunks, you've got to believe me, I didn't do it."

The two older Saiyans scowled.

"What are you playing at?" Trunks growled, "Do you think this is a joke?"

"Were Kumo and Valese a fucking joke to you?" Goten snarled.

Akira took a hesitant step back. "Listen," he said in as calm a voice as he could muster, "Whatever you think you saw, it wasn't me. I was in the Yunzabit Heights until just a few minutes ago; I just got here..."

"Well, since your power can't be felt, it's sort of hard for anyone to say just where you were. Don't you think that's convenient, murderer?" Trunks asked in a low threatening voice as his power level began to rise.

"Please don't do this," Akira pleaded still stepping away from the two angry Saiyans. "I don't want to fight you..."

"You'd rather fight someone who doesn't know your coming?" Goten asked, his ki also rising. "Or maybe you just like killing helpless children who can't defend themselves."

Akira stopped moving away from them as his facial expression became firm, "I don't want to hurt you, but I'm going to catch the real murderer, even if I have to go through you to do it. You're my friends. Please don't waste your strength fighting me; help me find the real killer..."

"I think our friendship ended a long time ago," Goten said as golden light erupted around both he and Trunks. "You murdered our families, our friends, and you'll kill us the moment we turn our backs...but rather than let that happen, we're going to kill you right here, right now."

Akira dropped into his fighting stance, but to his surprise, Trunks reached into his pocket and pulled out a capsule with a small smirk. He pressed the button and dropped it on the ground.

With a poof of smoke a small briefcase appeared. The last of Vegeta's children opened the case and pulled out an oddly shaped gun.

"Are you ready?" he asked Goten, who nodded. Then he turned to Akira and his smile grew larger, "You should have made it a point to destroy more of Capsule Corp. when you had the chance. Mom's handheld Brute Ray is going to bring about your death." He quickly fired the ray gun at Goten and then pointed it at himself and pulled the trigger.

Akira's eyes widened in horror as both men's bodies began to change and grow, filling the area between the buildings on either side of the street as they became golden Oozaru. The two giant apes roared and beat their chests, then began destroying the buildings around them.

_'Shit! They're going to tear the city apart!'_ Akira's hair became golden and he shot into the air.

Oozaru Goten noticed the little golden man first, his huge fist slammed into Akira, sending the young man crashing through a distant building.

"Okay," Akira said as he pulled himself out of the rubble, "that kind of hurt."

His golden hair lengthened as he summoned more power into his body; his muscles trembled slightly with the strain of holding the form. He knew that he didn't have a lot of energy to spare; he had to finish the fight as quickly as possible. He shot forward and landed a huge blow to the back of Goten's head, sending the monstrous ape to the ground.

The sight of the large ape falling attracted Oozaru Trunks' attention. The second golden ape swung his huge fist at Akira, but the young man quickly moved out of the way. Trunks roared in rage and fired a large ki blast out of his mouth at the golden warrior; once again Akira dodged, but as it passed by him the heat from the blast caused the skin on his arm to blister.

Akira cringed in pain and then spun as he felt Goten behind him; he barely got his hands up in time to partially block the blow from the crazed ape. The young man hit the ground hard and when he pulled himself to his feet, he found both apes were focusing all their attention on him. Suddenly they began to shrink again.

Akira wasn't sure if this was a good thing or not. On the one hand, he didn't have to deal with two out of control giant apes; but on the other, the two men had becoming even more powerful than they were as Oozaru.

Goten and Trunks looked at their new form, admiring the fur and large muscles. Goten looked very much like his father had in that form with red fur and black hair that fell about his shoulders; Trunks' fur was a slightly darker red than his friends' and his hair was lavender, sticking up the way it did when he was a Super Saiyan after he'd let it grow long. The two Super Saiyan Fours smiled at the frightened face of Akira.

"You don't have much of an advantage anymore, do you?" Goten asked, his yellow eyes shinning maliciously.

"Please don't do this..." Akira pleaded once more.

Trunks responded by vanishing and appearing in front of the startled younger man, his fist smashed into Akira's stomach, doubling him over. Goten also appeared in front of Akira, delivering a powerful uppercut that sent Akira into the sky. Trunks finished off combo by flying above the young man and then threw a ki blast into his chest. Akira slammed into the ground as an entire city block collapsed under the force of the blast.

Akira's clothes were in tatters as he pulled himself out of the rubble; blood trickled down into his eyes from a large gash on his forehead and his chest was burned badly. He watched through tired eyes as Trunks landed next to Goten and smirked at him.

"I really expected a lot more out of you Akira," Trunks said. "What's the matter, worn down after your killing spree?"

Akira closed his eyes and forced his fatigue away from him; he had to survive if he wanted to avenge Pan's death. When his eyes opened, the bags had lessened and the look of fear was gone, replaced by steely resolve.

"I'm going to get you to understand that I didn't commit those crimes even if I have to beat it into you," he promised as he dropped into his fighting stance.

Goten smirked and then shot forward, followed by Trunks.

ooo

King Kai's planet was beginning to get crowded as more and more Z-Fighters arrived; if the non-warrior women hadn't been sent to Paradise, the kai would have had to relocate everyone to the Grand Kai Planet. The small world was now inhabited by Vegeta, Piccolo, Uubu, Android 18, Yamcha, Tien, Chiaotzu, Master Roshi, and Gohan, with Pan on her way according to King Yemma's last message.

King Kai sighed, he wasn't going to be able to feed that many people and on top of it all, three of them were Saiyans. The food wasn't his only problem though, once it got around that he'd known about Akira and had even let the young man go, he was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

The kai put his hands behind his back and looked down, focusing on the battle on Earth. He couldn't feel Akira, but Goten and Trunks' power levels were enormous, there was little doubt about what was going on.

"Well?" Vegeta's impatient voice called out, "What's happening?"

King Kai frowned and then said, "Goten and Trunks are fighting Akira. They've both gone to Super Saiyan Four, I think. So far as I can tell, they're winning quite handily, but I don't know what level Akira's fighting at, he might just be toying with them or perhaps he's been worn down as a result of so much fighting tonight.

"So they used the Brute Ray, did they? Good, I hope they give that bastard everything he deserves!" Vegeta said.

King Kai glanced over his shoulder at the Saiyan Prince and noticed Piccolo standing next to him with a confused look on his face. The kai knew that the Namek's relationship with Akira was almost a cross between his friendship with Goku and his relationship with Gohan, and it wasn't just because of Akira's youth or his strange connection to Goku. During his time in Other World, Akira had confided in and sought advice from Piccolo; over the months that the two had spent training and meditating together, they had become good friends.

In King Kai's mind there was no doubt of Akira's guilt, whatever his relationship was to Goku or his friendship with Piccolo, but the Namekian warrior refused to believe it. However, Piccolo hadn't been on Earth watching as everyone around him was killed by a man they'd called friend, the others would not share his optomism.

"Dad!" Pan yelled as she landed on the crowded planet. She ran forward and hugged him tightly.

"Pan," Gohan said as he hugged her back, "I'm so sorry you ended up here. We should have known, there were lots of warning signs...I should have listened to Trunks."

Pan's face fell, "We couldn't have known...it's just unthinkable..." she looked down and sighed. "I loved him...and then right before he killed me he told me I was just something for him to play with."

Gohan hugged her tighter. "I'm sorry Pan," he whispered, "I know how much you love him."

"No," she replied with a surge of anger, "I hate him...he can burn in hell for all I care."

Gohan looked down at her sadly, but nodded in understanding; they all felt the same way.

ooo

Goten threw a punch at the long haired Akira, who dodged out of the way, but was sent flying headfirst by a kick from Trunks. Akira flipped in the air and landed on his feet, his momentum causing him to slide for a few seconds before finally coming to a stop. The young man looked up and immediately took a blow to the side of the head from Goten, followed by an uppercut from Trunks.

Akira staggered back and tried to mount some sort of defense, but the two enraged Super Saiyans easily overpowered him. They pummeled the young man from all sides, moving so fast he couldn't see them until after a fist or foot slammed into his body. After several minutes, Trunks, in what ended up being a merciful attack, knocked Akira into the rubble of an already collapsed building.

The young Saiyan took the brief break in the battle to try to regain his bearings. He was getting his ass handed to him and he knew it, but he couldn't die. Not yet. Not until he'd seen who had actually killed Pan and made him pay. Someone had been messing with his head for a long time, and who ever it was either looked like him or could change his appearance. Now his most of friends were dead, thinking that he'd been the one who did it, and the ones who were still alive were trying to kill him; if he wasn't careful, they'd probably succeed. He knew his body was in no condition to be in a fight of this magnitude, his power had been depleted even before they'd attacked him and now he was running on fumes.

_'If I want to live through this I have to go all out, no matter what the consequences,'_ he thought grimly as ki began to surge through his body. _'Shit, this is going to hurt...'_

With a scream of pain and exertion, Akira ascended to the next level, his blond hair returned to its natural black and fell about his shoulders, red fur sprouted all over his body, and his muscles bulged painfully under his skin. He propelled himself out of the rubble and hovered in the air, his yellow eyes searching for the other two Super Saiyan Fours.

He didn't have to look very long.

"So," Trunks said in an even voice as he floated up to meet Akira, "You're going to play for real now, are you? You're still going to die."

Akira let a small smirk cross his face, "Don't forget which of us is stronger. It might be two on one, but you two are the ones in trouble."

"I won't let you walk away from this," Goten said from behind, his voice filled with cold rage, "after what you did to my wife and son, I'll make you pay."

The smirk died on the young man's lips, "Goten, I am sorry for your loss, but yo--" his sentence was cut off by a Goten's fist slamming into his face.

"Don't tell me you're sorry, no fucking apology will bring them back!" Goten screamed as Akira crashed to the ground. Goten brought his hands to his side and chanted, "Ka Me Ha Me....HA!" His hands came forward on the last word and a red beam erupted from his palms and shot straight for Akira.

_'Damn it,'_ Akira thought as he watched the ki beam approach, _'He's so out of control he'll destroy the planet just to get at me.'_ The young man could have dodged the attack, but the chances of Goten redirecting it before it hit the Earth were slim at best. Summoning up a lot of his reserves, Akira swatted the blast away. He put his fingers to his forehead and vanished.

Trunks watched the blast shoot up into the sky with a sense of relief. He knew his friend probably would have been able to keep the blast from destroying the planet, but it was still scary to watch. He glanced at Goten and noticed that the younger warrior had a crazed glint in his yellow eyes, Goten wouldn't have cared it the planet was lost so long as Akira was taken with it. The lavender haired Super Saiyan opened his mouth and was about to try to calm his friend down a little, but suddenly Akira appeared behind Goten.

"Sei Kaze!" Akira yelled, firing a red beam into Goten's unsuspecting back. The last of Goku's children screamed in pain as the blast engulfed him; a second later he hit to the ground.

Akira looked at Trunks and vanished. Trunks tried to follow the young man's movements, but soon realized that he was at a major disadvantage, even if his power was equal to Akira's. The young man's ability to completely hide his ki made it almost impossible to follow his movements. Without a life force for his mind to latch onto, Trunks's eyes were forced to search on their own and there was no way they'd be able to spot any attack in time.

As if to illustrate this point, Akira's knee suddenly slammed into the lavender haired Saiyan's stomach, doubling him over; the young man then drove his other knee into Trunks' face, knocking him backwards, and then finished his opponent off by bringing both fists down hard on the dazed Super Saiyan's chest. Trunks fell like a stone, landing a short distance from where Goten was just pulling himself out of the remains of a building.

Akira watched patiently as the two warriors picked themselves up; under normal circumstances he might have tried to finish the battle now, but he needed every moment of rest he could find. His body was quickly burning through his energy and he didn't think he'd be able to maintain level four for very long, level five was completely out of the question.

Once Trunks and Goten were both on their feet again, they took to the air, charging Akira at full speed. The young man dodged a kick that Trunks aimed at his head, but was doubled over by Goten's fist smashing into his stomach. His quick reflexes saved him from a ki blast that Trunks, who was now behind him, sent at his back, but again, Goten was there and Akira was sent flying end over end towards the ground by a powerful kick.

With less than a second to spare, the young man regained control of his flight and hovered just above the ground. He propelled himself upward and drove his elbow into Goten's stomach, then turned and kicked Trunks before the lavender haired Super Saiyan could launch the ki blast he was preparing. Unfortunately, in the brief moment he had taken his eyes off of Goten, the other Saiyan powered up a small ki blast and fired it at Akira's head. The blast wasn't powerful enough to kill, but it hurt like hell and stunned the young man long enough for to Trunks build up a stronger blast. Akira felt Trunks' attack coming and managed to protect himself enough to save his life, but the explosion of the blast still sent him crashing through a building and into a slightly busy street.

Cars and trucks came to a screeching halt and pedestrians gawked as Akira stood in the crater his landing had formed.

"Are you alrigh--" a woman started to ask from under her umbrella until she noticed Akira's red fur and tail.

The young man looked at her with intense yellow eyes and she screamed and ran. The rest of the crowd quickly followed her example as they too noticed the Akira's alien appearance; soon the majority of the street was empty except for the abandoned vehicles.

"Hey, thanks for clearing the street for us," Trunks called out as he and Goten landed a short distance away.

The two Super Saiyans fired ki blasts simultaneously before Akira was even out of the crater, sending the young man plowing through asphalt and vehicles.

"Okay, they are really starting to piss me off," Akira muttered weakly as he climbed out of the hole; he took a deep breath and flew toward his former friends.

Trunks and Goten fired two more ki beams at him, but this time he was ready. Just as the blasts were about to hit him, he used Instant Transmission and vanished, reappearing right in front of them, his hands out stretched and ki blasts charged.

"Ha!" he yelled as the blue energy beams left his hands and struck the two warriors in their chests, sending them crashing into a building down the street. As soon as they hit the building, the young man fell to his knees, breathing hard. Every time he attacked, every time he defended, every time he didn't defend, it was all taking a little out of him and he didn't have a lot to give to begin with. He hoped they'd at least stay away long enough for him to catch his breath, but he could already feel them approaching once again.

"Not looking so good there Akira," Goten called out, "it's harder when you're not killing babies, isn't it?"

Akira climbed to his feet, but didn't respond; there really wasn't any point in arguing with them over it until they calmed down. Unfortunately he didn't think that was going to happen anytime soon. The two Saiyans glared at him and Akira returned their glare with as much intensity as he could muster.

_'I guess this would be a good time to use Multi-Form,'_ the young man thought, _'maybe then I can afford to concentrate on just one of them for a few minutes.'_ He did his best to focus and then called out, "Multi-Form!" Akira felt the ki form into a separate body and readied himself to attack.

Trunks and Goten looked at each other in confusion and shrugged.

"What the hell is that supposed to be?" Goten asked. Akira looked at his double and frowned, it was more solid this time, but still had come out fat and stupid looking.

"Damn it!" he said as he touched it and the two became one again. It was bad enough that he'd screwed it up and made himself look dumb, but on top of that he'd wasted precious energy forming it.

"How did an idiot like you ever beat my dad?" Trunks wondered out loud.

"Okay, first, it's hard learning that technique without someone showing you how; and second I didn't kill Vege--" his sentence was cut off by Goten's fist slamming into his mouth.

Trunks appeared behind Akira and swept the young man's legs out from under him, but as Akira fell he brought one hand down and did a back handspring, narrowly avoiding a right cross from Goten.

As soon as his feet hit the ground, he had to duck under a kick from Trunks that was aimed at his head, but even as he ducked he saw a kick from Goten that had been aimed low to catch him if he avoided Trunks' attack. With no other defense, Akira used Instant Transmission to appear behind the Goten. Akira kicked the dark haired Super Saiyan in the back, sending him flying into Trunks, and then he took off into the sky, trying to find a little space so he could rest.

_'Damn, they fight really well together,'_ Akira thought as he hovered above them. _'They've been fighting together for so long, they can anticipate each other's moves. If I avoid one attack there's another waiting to pick me off, and if I do get hit, another attack is coming before I can recover.'_

Trunks and Goten refused to back off the young man, as soon as they'd recovered from his last attack they took off after him. The two Super Saiyans appeared on either side of Akira and attacked simultaneously.

Akira's hands were moving at lightening fast speeds, but he simply couldn't keep up with the eight limbs that were continuously swinging for him. He could see the attacks coming, but didn't have enough appendages to block them all. The two Saiyans had him boxed in and, despite his best attempts at defense, were slowly picking him apart; it didn't take long for more cuts and bruises to appear on his face and body, and the ones that were already there where being opened even more.

Akira quickly realized that he couldn't go toe to toe with both of them. He dropped his attempts at defense, doing his best to ignore the barrage of punches and kicks he was taking; and then, firing ki blasts from each hand to distract them, he dove for the city below, weaving in and out of streets and buildings so fast many bystanders were blown off their feet as he passed them. Goten and Trunks chased after him, but once again the barrier gave him the advantage. Akira began using guerrilla tactics, ducking into alleys to rest and hide, and then attacking the two Saiyans from behind after they had passed by. It was slow, and perhaps a little cowardly in his opinion, but it was effective; the two warriors were gradually being worn down.

"This is stupid," Trunks said as he and Goten pulled them selves out of a building Akira had just knocked them into, "He's just playing with us again and there's nothing we can do about it like this."

"What choice do we have?" Goten asked, dusting himself off. "As long as he stays in the city he's going to have this advantage and he won't follow us anywhere that will give us the advantage. Right now, we're after him."

"We could always destroy the city," Trunks said, mostly joking, though a part of him thought it might almost be worth it.

Goten looked like he was probably thinking the same thing.

"You wouldn't do that," Akira's voice called to them from the top of a building on the other side of the street, "You might be acting stupid right now, but I know you're still the good guys...Now if I could just convince you that I'm one of the good guys too, we could start looking for the real killer."

The two Super Saiyans charged at Akira, who nimbly dodged to the side as both punches sailed by him. Trunks and Goten landed and faced him, both looked angry and tired.

"You can't win," he confidently proclaimed, "You're already weakened, it won't be long before you fall out of this new form and then you'll stand no chance at all." He didn't add that he was only slightly better off than they were, mostly because he could hide and rest when he needed it.

Trunks glanced at Goten, scooted a little farther a way from his friend, and then said, "He's right Goten, we can't win."

Goten started to protest, but then he saw the lavender haired Saiyan look down at the roof top between them; Goten smiled.

"Maybe you're right, Trunks..." he replied with a tiny smile, then he turned to Akira and said, "Alright, what now? Are you going to try to kill us here, or play some more games?"

"I told you, I don't want to kill you," Akira said, his excitement was building at the sight of them apparently giving him a chance to explain. "I'm not the one who killed the others."

"Then who did?" Trunks asked.

"I don't know, but it wasn't me," Akira looked at the ground, missing the nod that passed between the other two fighters. "I got to Pan just before you got there, she was already unconscious..."

"Fu-Sion-Ha!"

Akira looked up just in time to see Goten and Trunks' fingers touch and a brilliant light shine around them. He'd never seen the fusion dance preformed, but he'd heard enough to recognize it when he saw it.

_'Oh shit,' _he thought as a single form became visible in the light, _'this isn't good...'_

o

o

A/N: Maybe I should only write fight scenes...no plot, no dialog, just fighting. For some reason these scenes are the easiest to write and consequently chapters that have big battles tend to be a lot longer than my regular chapters. I hope you liked Trunks and Goten's battle so far; I'm not sure when the next update will come, it all depends on how school and work go. Anyway, thanks for all the reviews (10 just for chapter 22)!

Draco the Destroyer: Don't worry, I didn't think of it as a flame at all, and even if it was a flame (which it wasn't), I don't really mind. I personally would have considered flaming that last chapter if someone else had written it. It was just wrong and gross and wrong some more.

Toni the Mink: She didn't die because I wanted to have the small scene at the beginning of this chapter, but other than that, her "death scene" was a cut and paste job from the first chapter with just a few changes.

Everyone else: Yes, it's true, Akira was not the killer. Unfortunately, no one else knows that!


	24. Gotenks Reborn

**Chapter Twenty-Four: Gotenks Reborn**

o

A new warrior stepped forward as the light faded; his hair was black with streaks of lavender and his fur was the same dark red that Trunks' had been; he pulled a mirror out of a small vest that had mysteriously appeared on him and admired himself for a moment.

"Damn Gotenks," the fused being said to himself with the mixed voices of Goten and Trunks, "the years have been _very_ good to you!" He turned and looked at Akira, "So," he asked with a smirk, "what's it feel like to finally see the instrument of your death?"

Akira stepped back in fear. He'd been told about the power given to those that fused and Trunks and Goten had done it as Super Saiyan Fours; the difference between his power and that of Gotenks was enormous. His only hope was to put some distance between himself and this new enemy; if what Vegeta had told him held true then all he had to do was survive for another ten minutes and Gotenks would split into Trunks and Goten again. The young man turned to flee, but found him self looking into the eyes of the smirking fused being.

"No, no," Gotenks said as he wagged his finger, "you can't leave now, the funs just starting! Stinging Machine Gun Punch!"

A fist slammed into Akira's stomach, the young man coughed up blood and nearly blacked out.

"Great Kick Special!" Gotenks kicked him in the face, sending him high into the air, and then appeared above him and drove an elbow into his chest.

Akira was in the basement of the building he'd crashed through before his brain even registered how much pain he was in from Gotenks attack.

"Hello? Are there any murderers in here?" Gotenks voice called out from somewhere above him. "Come on out and play, I know that last attack wasn't enough to kill you...that doesn't come until later."

Akira gingerly climbed to his feet, fired a ki blast up through the hole that his entrance had made, and then flew through a first floor window, praying that his opponent wouldn't notice him. A foot to the back of the head that sent him face first into the ground let the young man know that Gotenks hadn't been fooled.

The fused Super Saiyan pulled Akira off the street, lifted the young man over his head, yelled, "Screaming Angry Wambat Slam," and then slammed him down hard, shattering the windows of the surrounding building with the force of the impact and cracking the street in every direction. Gotenks sat on the curb and waited for the young man to climb out of the hole, his legs bouncing with childish excitement. When Akira didn't appear, the fused being scowled, reached into the hole, and pulled the young man out, holding him up by his neck.

"Come on, you have to put up more of a fight or no one will remember this as a great battle," Gotenks complained.

"What are you talking about?" Akira asked weakly as he struggled against the powerful grip.

"Well, it's all fine and good for me to kill you, but it's more exciting if I have to work hard for it. Right now, everyone's going to think this fight was over before it started, I haven't even had to use my best moves yet."

"Is that why you keep saying all those stupid things?" the young man asked, his fingers trying to pry the fused being's fingers from his neck.

"Hmph," Gotenks snorted, "You're just jealous that all my attacks have flair and yours...well yours don't work very well, now do they?" With a flick of his wrist he tossed the other Saiyan high into the air and then took off after him. "Hyper Plasma Shortcake!"

As Akira's limp body reached the apex of its ascent, Gotenks appeared next to it, powered up a large ball of ki and then slammed it into Akira's chest, sending the young man crashing through several buildings.

ooo

"Hmm, Trunks and Goten have fused," King Kai announced to the anxious Z Fighters, "Akira must have gained the upper hand in the battle."

"They became that idiot?" Piccolo asked incredulously. "We'll be lucky if he doesn't blow up the planet trying to make the fight more exciting!"

"With a Super Saiyan Four fighting Akira the planet will probably be destroyed no matter what," Krillin said, "Plus, who knows what Akira plans on doing if he manages to kill all of Earth's defenders."

"Well," Vegeta replied with a scowl, "this wouldn't even be an issue if I'd been allowed to kill the boy when I had the chance!"

Gohan looked up at the Saiyan Prince from his place on the grass in confusion. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

King Kai shook his head, this was about to get very unpleasant. "We didn't know if he was the killer, Vegeta," the kai pointed out. "Besides, you know we can't interfere with the living world except in extreme circumstances."

"If he kills Goten and Trunks there won't be anyone left to stop him from creating your 'extreme circumstances!' He might already be the most powerful being in the universe and now he's off his rocker," Vegeta shot back.

King Kai didn't have a response. For a long time, no one said a word on the small planet and then the flood gates opened.

"You mean you had a chance to stop him and you let him go?!?"

"Why didn't you at least tell us it was him?"

"What kind of deity let's a killer go free?"

The yelling seemed to go on and on, with no end in sight, until a sudden explosion of ki brought the argument to an abrupt end. Piccolo stood in the middle of a small crater, his aura dancing around him like a flame and a scowl on his face.

"You are all idiots," he seethed, "the universe does not revolve around you, no matter what you think. King Kai had no choice but to let Akira go when he came to us, the laws that keep him from interfering have been in place since the universe began. Do you really expect them to be bent or broken every time it suits your needs?"

He glared at the surprised fighters, only Vegeta seemed unaffected by the Namek's outburst.

"Easy for you to say," the Saiyan Prince smirked, "You weren't down there getting killed by someone you thought was a friend! Oh wait...I forgot, you still don't think that he's doing it, do you? You think everyone here just dropped dead on their own and hallucinated Akira killing them."

Piccolo glared at Vegeta, "I'm simply keeping an open mind. I don't think he was acting like a murderer when we saw him and I don't think he could do something like this. That kid is many things, but he's not a good liar, and it would take a whole lot of lies for us all to think he's our friend when he just wanted to kill us."

King Kai shook his head and turned back to the battle. The occupants of the planet were quieter for the moment, but if Gotenks was defeated more arguments would break out.

ooo

Akira lay very still in the small alley he'd landed in; blood flowed freely from cuts on his face and from his mouth and nose. His eyes slowly opened and he watched the fur on his arm start to recede, he could feel his energy rapidly falling and knew that he was about to drop out of his Super Saiyan Four form.

"No," he whispered, not yet, "I can't lose yet..."

The young man powered up as much as possible and, to his satisfaction, the fur did not vanish. He pulled himself to his hands and knees and spit the warm blood out of his mouth. He looked up and found himself staring at the knees of Gotenks.

"Have a nice nap?" the fused being asked mockingly.

"Not really..."

"Well, you know what they say, 'No rest for the wicked,'" Gotenks kneed Akira in the face (forgetting to name the attack this time) sending him into the side of a building.

"Please," Akira whispered as he fell out of the dent in the wall and crashed to the ground once again, "Please, Gotrunks-"

"It's Gotenks!" the fused Super Saiyan yelled, "G-O-T-E-N-K-S!"

"Whatever," Akira muttered, "I didn't kill anyone..."

Gotenks rolled his eyes and folded his arms, "Are you still going on about that? Don't you get it? We saw you. We were there...and so were you. Lying about it now isn't going to save you."

"I'm...I'm not lying," Akira whispered as he slowly began to build up his power again.

"You're an idiot Akira, did you know that?" Gotenks looked down at the young man in disgust, "You murdered Vegeta, Bulma, and all the Nameks, but we didn't think it could possibly be you, even though there were signs that it was. You killed Chi-Chi, Dende, Mr. Popo, Korin and Yajirobe, but still we gave you the benefit of the doubt. And then you disappeared and low and behold everyone we know and love start dropping like flies." He reached down and grabbed Akira by the neck, lifting him into the air, "After all of that, after we saw you tear Kumo's head off, do you really think I'm going to listen to one fucking thing you say from here on out?"

"No," Akira gasped and then his hand shot out and hit Gotenks in the face, the fused being dropped him. "But I think you'll listen to this: Super Kaio-Ken!"

A red aura exploded around Akira as his barrier fell; Gotenks looked at him in shock and a hint of fear.

"You can feel it, can't you? I'm stronger than you now and you've been messing around for so long that you only have a few minutes left until you turn back into Goten and Trunks," Akira smirked, trying to hide the pain he was feeling, "but until that time, I'm going to beat the shit out of you."

"Don't kid yourself," the fused being replied with a confident smile, "You might be strong, but you're still the bad guy, you're destined to lose."

Akira's fist lashed out and Gotenks was sent flying out of the alley and into a building on the other side of the street.

The young man scowled and grabbed his shoulder as it made an unpleasant bubbling sound. _'My body can't handle this for very long,'_ he thought.

The Kaio-Ken artificially raised his power exponentially, but his body wasn't in much shape to handle such a huge power increase; he figured he had only a little while longer than Gotenks before he would have to stop using the skill or risk killing himself. Akira took a deep breath and then shot off in the direction Gotenks had been sent, up ahead he could see the fused being coming for him too.

Akira had boasted that he was stronger than Gotenks, and in terms of pure power it was true, but the fused being didn't have to deal with trying to maintain the Keo Ken, which was eating away at Akira's body at an alarming rate.

The two super powers collided with such force that several buildings around them crumbled under the energy that was given off. Akira and Gotenks' fists hit each other in the face at the same time, both fell towards the ground for a second, but they both recovered quickly. The two powerful warriors skimmed along the ground, each throwing punches and dodging counter attacks at seemingly impossible speeds.

Finally Akira managed to get a kick through the fused being's defenses and Gotenks crashed to the ground; the young man tried to follow up his small victory with another attack, but Gotenks was already flying up at him. Akira's head snapped back as Gotenks slammed his own head into the young man's face.

The attack left Akira dazed, but Gotenks spent most of the time comically rubbing his aching head. Just as Akira started regaining his bearings, Gotenks stopped rubbing his head, took a deep breath, and blew what initially looked like an enormous bubble.

"What the hell is that?" Akira asked, as his eyes finally focused.

"Well, I would have come up with a cooler move, but I'm a bit rushed at the moment. So I'll use an oldie, but a goodie," Gotenks replied with a smile as the 'bubble' took shape, "Go Super Ghost Kamikaze Attack!"

"Hi! How about a hug!" the Gotenks ghost said with a giggle. It shot towards Akira with a maniacal glint in its eyes.

Akira didn't know what the ghost was supposed to do, but he was pretty sure he didn't want to hug the thing, so he did the only logical thing he could do: he ran. The young Super Saiyan sped away at top speed, weaving in and out of destroyed buildings, ducking under rubble, and anything else he could think of, but the ghost stayed right with him the whole way, a scary grin on its face.

Gotenks watched with a deep sense of satisfaction as his ghost chased Akira around the battle ground. The young man was clearly confused about what he should do to destroy it, but for the moment he seemed to be easily avoiding it. Gotenks planned on changing that; he took another deep breath, spit out seven more ghosts, and waited patiently while they formed.

One of the ghosts got its head stuck in its body and floated blindly through the rest of the group who all hurried to get out of their blind compainion's way.

"Hey idiot! Watch where you're going!" several ghosts screamed.

After much struggle the blind one was able to get his head out, he looked around sheepishly, scratched the back of his head and said, "Sorry about that."

Gotenks shook his head at their antics and then said, "Okay, here's the..." he looked at the group clustered around him, he was missing someone. It only took him a second to spot the AWOL ghost, who was lying on his back, his eyes closed in sleep. "Hey! Wake up! We're trying to win a fight here!"

The ghost lazily opened his eyes, looked up at Gotenks and stuck out his tongue before going back to sleep.

One of the other ghosts floated over to the sleeping deserter and slapped it on the back of the head as he yelled, "Wake up moron!"

A second later the two ghosts vansihed in an enormous explosion.

Gotenks rudded his temples. "How come you guys are still so stupid?" he asked.

"Hey, don't blame us, you're the one that made us," one of the remaining ghosts replied with a shrug.

Gotenks sighed and began to explain his plan. There was another loud explosion just as he finished. Akira had apparently grown tired of running and had simply blasted the ghost chasing after him. The resulting explosion sent the young man into the side of a building, but he quickly climbed to his feet.

"Ready?" Gotenks asked the ghosts who nodded eagerly, "Then go!"

Three of the ghosts chased after Akira while the other three spread out and began firing ki blasts at the young man.

Akira suddenly found himself in a very bad possition. The ki beams being thrown at him wouldn't have been much of a problem, but anytime he focused too much on the ranged attacks, the ghosts behind him would close the gap and, as he had learned with the first ghost, he didn't want them anywhere near him. His mind raced as he tried to think of a way to get out of his predicament without getting hurt too badly. He knew he could hit the ones chasing him with ki blasts, but the explosion from one had been bad enough, he didn't want to see it multiplied by three. His problem was he wasn't sure if he could hit one of the ghosts shooting at him without slowing down enough for the chasers to catch him.

As he continued to avoid the ki blasts being shot at him and the three ghosts trying to latch on to him, he noticed Gotenks standing on the ground with a smug look on his face. Akira's eyes lit up as a plan began to take shape in his mind.

He slowed down and threw a ki blast at the nearest ghost who had been shooting at him, the ghost easily avoided the attack and then made several rude hand gestures at Akira before resuming his attacks. Akira could feel two more ki waves coming at him from behind, and a quick glance confirmed that the other three ghosts were getting close also. The young man smiled as he put two fingers to his forehead.

Gotenks saw the explosion, but wasn't sure why Akira had just let himself be hit. A second later, three ki beams shot over his shoulder, taking out the ghosts who had been throwing ki blasts at the young man. Gotenks turned and found Akira standing right behind him, a big grin on his face.

The fused being raised a fist to swing at Akira, but the young man smiled and pointed over Gotenks' shoulder. Gotenks turned and all of the blood drained from his face, two of the ghosts had managed to avoid destruction and were now speeding toward Akira at high speed.

"No you idiots!" Gotenks yelled, "You'll get me too."

The ghosts apparently didn't hear him as they continued to fly towards the two Saiyans. Gotenks started to fly away, but Akira grabbed hold of his vest and held him in his spot.

"Why don't you stick around? I'm confident that I'm strong enough survive the explosion, aren't you?" the young man asked.

Gotenks looked from the ghosts to the young man and then back again. At the last second he decided he didn't want to risk it; he fired two ki blasts at the charging ghosts, hitting them in the face and the causing them to explode.

The resulting explosion caused even more buildings in the surrounding area to collapse, it also sent Akira crashing to the ground and caused the other ghosts that Gotenks was making to explode which sent the fused being into the ground also.

"Damn, I'm kind of rusty," Gotenks complained as he pulled himself out of the rubble. He scanned the wasteland that had formed around the battle site for any sign of Akira; it only took a moment to spot the young man push a large piece of building off to the side and stand.

"Hmmm, now which move should I use on him next?" Gotenks mused as he stroked his chin.

His thoughts were interrupted by Akira yelling, "Sei Kaze!" as a red beam erupted from his palms.

Gotenks brought his arms forward and called out, "Magnum Sundae!"

The two ki beams met and quickly grew into an enormous ball of energy.

"Shit!" Akira yelled, "We're going to destroy the city! You have to stop shooting your beam!"

"Like hell I will!" Gotenks retorted, "YOU stop shooting YOUR beam."

"Okay, look, we'll stop at the same time," Akira said as he struggled against the force of Gotenks' ki blast. "On the count of three."

"One."

"Two."

"Three."

Neither fighter stopped pouring energy into their attack.

"You were supposed to stop!" Gotenks yelled.

"YOU were supposed to stop." Akira replied.

The ki ball grew larger and each fighter began to weaken. A sudden idea hit Akira and he slowly rose into the sky; Gotenks sensed his enemy moving and raised his hands to follow the young man. The ki ball slowly rose off the ground until it was floating between Akira and Gotenks. The young man allowed his side of the power struggle to dissipate and the giant ball of ki shot towards him.

"Oh hell yeah!" Gotenks cheered as he did a little dance that ended with him holding up two victory signs while flashing a big, toothy grin.

A second later, Akira appeared in front of him and threw his hands forward, "Sei Kaze!"

Gotenks took the blast in the chest and was sent crashing into the side of a toppled building; the fused being hit the cement and started to slump to the ground just as Akira reached him. With a powerful upper cut, the young man sent Gotenks completely through the downed building. Gotenks hit the ground hard, but almost immediately hopped to his feet; he picked up the remains of a car and swung it like a baseball bat at the head of a charging Akira.

"And it's a grand slam!" Gotenks crowed as he watched the young man crash through several buildings. The goofy fused being began rounding imaginary bases, tipping his cap and blowing kisses to the crowd that existed only in his mind. As he stomped down on 'home base' he looked up and his eyes grew wide. A second later he was sent flying, courtesy of a powerful kick from Akira.

The young man wasted no time in chasing after the stunned Gotenks. He landed a quick series of punches, sending the other fighter towards the earth, and then with a burst of red energy he beat the falling warrior to the ground, pulled his hands to his side and charged a ki blast.

"Sei Kaze!" Akira screamed as he fired the powerful ki blast that the undefended Gotenks.

Gotenks cried out in pain as the red energy wave carried him high into the air before he was able to roll off of the ki blast.

He hovered in the air, staring down at Akira, who returned his gaze. The two powerful warriors were both breathing hard and bleeding heavily from dozens of wounds covering their bodies. Neither moved for nearly a full minute , Gotenks was trying to recharge some of his power and think up a new move to use; Akira was also resting and planning, but on top of that he knew Gotenks' time was dwindling away. The young man was more than content with glaring at the fused being until he split back into Trunks and Goten.

Suddenly Gotenks dropped out of the sky and landed a short distance from Akira.

"Hey, I know what you're trying to do," the fused warrior yelled pointing an accusing finger at the young man, "You're just waiting for me to unfuse!"

Akira shrugged, "You caught me."

Gotenks scowled, "Here we are having what is probably the greatest battle the universe has ever seen, the ultimate good against the vile, evil betrayer, and you want to take the easy way out!" The Super Saiyan crossed his arms and put his nose in the air in disgust, "That's a really cheap way to try to win a fight," he declared.

"You talk too much," Akira replied, earning himself a glare that looked frighteningly like the one he had received from Vegeta on numerous occasions, usually right before the Saiyan Prince kicked his ass during their training in the gravity room.

Gotenks ran forward, his fist raised, "Fine, no more talking then. We'll finish this right now!"

o

o

A/N: Originally the entire Gotenks vs. Akira fight was just going to be one chapter, but at about the 6,000 word point I decided that I would split it up a bit. This chapter had the bulk of the fighting; the next chapter is mostly just the battle's conclusion and its consequences. On the plus side (for me at least) I have the next chapter basically all ready and it should come out in just a couple of days. I hope you all liked the Gotenks stuff, I tried to make him kind of goofy, but I didn't want to go too overboard since he's no longer a kid and Goten and Trunks were hella-pissed when they fused. A lot of his moves came from the anime, but weren't really shown; I just liked the names and figured he'd use some of the same stuff since he didn't have time to make up new ones. Please review and let me know what you think.

Erica: Nope, I didn't forget Goku. No one knows where he went when he rode off on Shenrons back. If I want to stay true to the series, no one will see him again until Pan sees him during the match between Goku Jr. and Vegeta Jr. Now, I'm not necessarily sticking with that (since everyone is now dead), but Goku will remain M.I.A. unless I think of a truly amazing way to bring him back (don't count on it though).

Nadz: You're right, it might be a bit of a stretch for Goten and Trunks to go from SSJ1 to SSJ4, but the anime was a little ambiguous on what the requirements were for Vegeta to reach SSJ4. If I remember correctly he wasn't using any sort of SSJ transformation when he was hit with the Brute Ray, so maybe that's not too important.

Toni the Mink: I've heard of Danny Phantom, but haven't ever seen it (no cable TV for poor ol' me). I'm kind of curious which of Akira's lines sounded like Danny's, was it the lines where he said he didn't want to fight, or the ones where he said he was going to beat the crap out of Goten and Trunks?

LauraNeatO: I hope I'm doing okay with Gotenks. I actually had a lot of the chapter written by Tuesday, but after reading you review I realized I hadn't put enough of his goofy personality in (originally he was a lot more serious in the fight).

R-Krulle: In chapter 18 Akira was trying to teach himself Multi-Form, but didn't do a very good job because he was tired and just didn't really know what he was doing. After that he fell asleep (for 4 chapters no less), so he never really got around to learning it.

Erica: I did say that Trunks would get a shot at 'Akira or whoever it is that's doing this,' but that might end up being a bit misleading. Mostly I meant he'd get a shot at Akira, though who knows? Maybe in the next chapter he'll at least get to see the killer.

UGotProblems: Wow, that's really high praise. I don't know if I really agree with you (I've read some really good dbz fanfics), but thank you very much just the same. I'm glad you like my stories so much.

Everyone Else: I'm glad you liked all the fighting in the last chapter; hopefully you liked this chapter just as much. And thanks for all the reviews (13 for the last chapter).


	25. And Then There was One

**Chapter Twenty-Five: And Then There Was One**

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A/N: A real quick update for you guys. Like I said, this was originally part of the last chapter; I figured I might as well post it since it was basically done and I've already gotten eight reviews for the previous chapter.

o

Hidden in the shadows of one of the destroyed buildings, a figure watched the fight with mild interest.

"It is nearly done," a second figure said as it appeared next to him.

The first observer nodded slightly and said, "Master's plan was...."

"Brilliant," the second finished without missing a beat.

Both wore identically evil grins as they watched the final moments of Gotenks and Akira's battle.

ooo

Gotenks ran forward, his fist raised, "Fine, no more talking then. We'll finish this right now!"

Akira stood his ground, bracing himself for the attack. A second later the two warriors were locked in mortal combat, all strategy, all showmanship, and nearly all thoughts of defense were completely abandoned. They just pounded on each other as hard as they could; the winner would be decided by who could absorb the most damage without succumbing to his injuries.

As the battle raged on, Gotenks' attacks became more desperate as he realized that his time would be over in less than a minute. He swung at Akira's head as hard as he could, but the young man saw it coming and ducked. The momentum from the punch threw Gotenks off balance, creating an opening that Akira immediately took advantage of.

The young man drove his knee into Gotenks' stomach, clasped his hands together at his side and swung his fists up into the fused warrior's face sending him flying into the air. Akira sped past him, turned and powered up a ki blast.

"This ends now!" he yelled as he fired the wave of red energy at the dazed fighter.

The blast didn't have a lot of power in it, Akira didn't have much to give, but it was enough. Gotenks took the blast in the chest and was sent plummeting to earth; two bodies hit the ground at the same time.

Trunks and Goten were in bad shape; even from a distance Akira could see that. He landed a short distance from them and then powered down when he saw they were no longer in their Super Saiyan Four form.

Trunks looked up at him weakly, "I guess this is the part where you finish us off."

Akira didn't think he could finish them even if he wanted to, but at the moment that wasn't something he wanted to be advertising, "I didn't want to fight you, I still don't. I know you think you saw me, but it was someone else, I really didn't kill anyone. Please, let me help you...once we've all recovered we can find the person who really did this."

The young man took a step forward to help them to their feet, but Goten pulled a metal pole off the ground and swung it at him. Akira couldn't get his body to react fast enough to avoid the attack; there was a crunching noise as the pole smashed into his arm and then Akira's right arm hung limply at his side.

The young man grimaced in pain and grabbed his broken arm with his other hand, "Fine," he said with a scowl, "if you still don't want to believe me, then I'll do this on my own." Akira turned, wobbly floated into the air, and headed out of town.

Goten and Trunks watched him go in disbelief.

"Why didn't he kill us?" Goten asked.

"Maybe he's still messing with us," Trunks replied, "He's been doing it for a long time...why would he stop now?"

"Yeah, but what's the point? I mean, everyone else is dead, why leave us alive?"

Trunks didn't have an answer; he just laid his head down, closed his eyes, and tried to focus on healing.

ooo

Akira had barely made it to the suburbs when the injury and fatigue finally caught up with him; he fell from the sky and landed in the middle of a small street. The young man lay very still as a small pool of blood began to form under him.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been there when he heard a voice call out, "Hey kid; hey, wake up."

Akira's eyes cracked open and he looked up at an old man who was kneeling next to him; the Saiyan opened his mouth to speak, but little more than a nearly silent whisper escaped his lips and even that was unintelligible.

"Are you alright kid?"

Akira glanced at what he could see of the rest of his body. His arm was broken, he was covered in cuts that were bleeding heavily; dark black and blue bruises covered his body, he was pretty certain his nose was sitting at an unnatural angle, one of his eyes was nearly swollen shut, and he probably had a concussion.

"Never felt better," he croaked with a weak smile.

"Try not to move, I'll call you an ambulance."

The young man could already see the looks on the faces of the doctors and nurses when they saw his tail, he'd be lucky if they even bothered to try to heal him before they started asking questions and calling scientists. In his weakened state, he probably could be subdued by enough equipment and military personnel; the idea of being poked and prodded wasn't appealing. On top of that he wasn't very far from a city that had just had a large portion of it reduced to rubble; it wouldn't take a genius to put two and two together.

"No. No ambulance, no doctors. I just need to rest..."

"But you're...I mean, just look at you," the old man said as he fished a cell phone out of his pocket.

"Please...please don't," Akira pleaded.

The old man seemed torn, he looked from the bleeding young man to the phone and then back to the young man. "Are you sure?" he asked hesitantly, clearly thinking that Akira was probably a little on the crazy side.

"Yeah, I know it looks bad, but I really just need to rest for a little," the young man took a deep breath and then forced himself to sit up, gritting his teeth against the pain that surged through him. "I'll be fine, I'm a quick healer."

"Well, you look like you'd better hurry up," the man told him, still looking unnerved by Akira's gruesome appearance.

The young man chuckled, and then wished that he hadn't as pain shot up his side from what was probably a cracked rib. He wiped blood from his eyes and felt his nose; he frowned, it was pretty crooked. Akira took a deep breath, braced himself, and then pushed his nose back into place with a loud crack. Blood immediately rushed out of his nose and down his face. The old man looked a little green as he saw the injured warrior try to wipe the blood away with the tattered remains of his shirt.

"Here," the man said, handing Akira a small bottle of 'natural spring' water.

"Thanks," the young Saiyan said as he took a large swig from the bottle and then used the rest to wash out some of his nastier looking wounds.

The old man watched the Saiyan curiously for a moment before asking, "So, what happened?"

Akira smiled sadly, "I had a, um...disagreement...with some...friends."

"Nice friends," the man commented dryly.

"It wasn't their fault, they were just confused."

There was a long moment of silence before the man said, "If your friends did this, I'd hate to see what an enemy would do to you..."

ooo

It had taken several minutes, but Trunks and Goten had finally regained enough strength to move away from the battle area; it hadn't happened a moment to soon either, as police and rescue vehicles began to arrive on the scene to look for survivors. Guilt and regret settled over the two Saiyans as they realized that their failed attempt at revenge had probably resulted in dozens of deaths.

"Do you think he was telling the truth?" Trunks asked as they stood.

"We saw him kill Kumo, didn't we?" Goten replied.

"Yeah, I guess you're right..."

The two stood in silence for a moment and then Goten said with a hint of confusion in his voice, "Still, it's odd that he didn't try to kill us...I mean, he just walked away when we were at his mercy...and someone who could look like Akira wouldn't be the weirdest thing we've ever seen."

Trunks looked at his friend, his own confusion clearly written on his face. Goten had a point, after everything that they'd been through, everything that they'd faced, something that could change its shape wasn't too far fetched.

"I think there's another possibility," a familiar voice said from behind them; the two Saiyans turned in surprise as they saw Akira step out of the shadows, looking surprisingly better than he had when they'd last seen him. "I think it's just kind of fun to play with your head right before I kill you."

The young man looked at Goten, "You know I think I'll miss Kumo, he was a cute kid...a little on the annoying side, but, well, I guess that's not a problem anymore, is it?"

"You monster!" Goten screamed as he rushed forward followed by Trunks.

The murderer smirked as he used his right hand to backhand the enraged, dark haired Saiyan into a wall, then with lightening fast speed his foot shot forward and slammed into Trunks' knee. There was a sickening crunch and Trunks fell to the ground with a cry of pain, his left leg bent the wrong way. The young man stepped over Trunks and walked calmly to the hole that Goten was lying in.

"Was Valese a good lay?" he asked with a toothy grin, "she seemed kind of pretty, I'm betting she was. I thought about enjoying her, you know, when she was lying helpless before me, telling me she'd do anything if I would spare her."

Goten threw a weak punch, but his fist was caught before it had even traveled half the distance to its target. The young man gave the older Saiyan's arm a quick twist, breaking the arm and then brought his own fist down on Goten's elbow, slicing clean through. Goten screamed and grabbed the stump as he fell to the ground.

"Now where was I?" the young man asked, stroking his chin as he thought, "Ah yes, like I was saying, your pretty little wife said she would give me anything if I would spare her. I thought about taking her up on the offer, but the thought of touching something that has been defiled by a Saiyan was just too revolting. So instead I broke her arms and legs, then sliced open her stomach, pulled out her intestines...and watched as she slowly bled to death."

Tears of grief and rage rolled down Goten's face as he looked up at the young man, his eyes filled with hate.

The evil man smiled down at him and then glanced over at Trunks who was staring helplessly at them. The murderer placed a finger against Goten's forehead, grinned at Trunks and then fired a ki beam.

Trunks cried out and then squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of the back of Goten's head exploding.

"And now we end it," a voice whispered in his ear, "I took your mother, your father, your sister, your woman, and all of your friends. And now that you see that you are nothing, the Saiyan race will become extinct and the universe will breathe a sigh of relief. Good bye son of Vegeta...and good riddance!" A second later, another ki blast exploded.

"Only one left..."

ooo

"Oh no..." King Kai said quietly. His voice was barely above a whisper, but it somehow carried over all the other conversations on the planet.

"What? What happened?" Gohan asked anxiously.

"They're gone," King Kai replied without looking up.

Much to the kai's surprise, no arguing or yelling broke out this time. The Z Fighters just stared at each other in disbelief. There was no one left to resurrect them, if such a thing was even possible at this point, and there was seemingly no way for them to get any sort of revenge. Even Vegeta seemed resigned to his fate at this point.

ooo

Akira's head snapped around as he felt two ki blasts.

"Oh Kami..." he whispered. The blasts felt like they were in the area that he had left Trunks and Goten. He couldn't sense the two Saiyans, but that didn't mean anything, he hadn't been able to sense them before; they were too weak and he was too tired for him to focus on them very well.

The young man tried to stand, but was restrained by the older gentle man who had been watching the apparently confused youth like a hawk.

"Hey kid, you need to rest...actually you need a doctor, but we'll get to that later."

"What I need is to go," Akira said, "I have to help my friends, they're in danger."

"Huh? What are you talking about?" the man's hand remained on Akira's shoulder, holding him down.

The young Saiyan took a deep breath, and then stood, nearly knocking the old man over at the same time.

"I'm really sorry sir," Akira said softly, "Thanks for the water, but I have to go right now."

"But..." the old man started to say; his voice failed him as a feint white aura appeared around Akira. The Saiyan slowly rose into the sky and, after a small wave to the gawking old man, took off toward the city.

_'Please tell me I didn't fail them again,'_ Akira thought as he flew with all the speed he could muster.

A few minutes later his fears were realized when he spotted the first body. The young man landed next to what he thought were the remains of Trunks, both of the older Saiyans had been wearing dark pants, so it was hard to tell for sure with the mutilation of the head.

Akira glanced around and quickly located Goten's body. This one was easier to identify, as only the back of the head and part of his arm were missing.

"Damn it," the young man whispered as tears welled up in his eyes. He'd done it again, he'd failed to protect his friends, and now they were dead. _'I should have stayed with them, I should have forced them to let me help them,'_ he thought angrily. Deep down he knew that there was little he could have done for them, he'd been too weak to force them to do anything after the battle, but that didn't keep the guilt from flowing over him. In his eyes he as good as killed them by leaving.

As he stood with his head bowed, tears and blood flowing, he heard something move just behind him. The young man whirled around and his eyes grew wide.

"Hello brother," a cold, familiar voice called out.

o

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A/N: Well, unfortunately that's where we have to leave off. For those of you who were really hoping to see Goten and Trunks survive: sorry. It had to happen; now everyone is dead, and no one knows that it wasn't Akira that killed them. I'm also really glad that everyone seemed to enjoy Gotenks in the last chapter; I was really worried about him being either too serious or overly dumb. I don't know how long before the next chapter, I honestly haven't even started it (though I have a very rough outline in my head). The next chapter should have some answers in it...maybe they'll even make some sort of sense. Hopefully I'll be able to get it out before the end of the weekend, but I don't make any promises. Thank you all so much for the reviews, your encouragement and occasional criticism really keep me motivated.

UGotProblems: Well, if I can't convince you otherwise, I'll just say 'thanks.'

Chris: It's true that Gohan often went to a new level when he was really pissed off, but at this point he hasn't been doing much training so his power level isn't where it needs to be to ascend.

Courtney: I'm glad that you've liked the story so much. I'm honestly not sure if or how I'll bring those that have been killed back. That isn't to say that there won't be a happy ending, I'm just not sure if I can come up with a way for them to be resurrected.

Toni the Mink: I'm not completely sure how the fusion power level thing goes either, that's why I had Goten and Trunks worn down before they fused (theoretically limiting Gotenks' power).

Donkeykong27: I'm glad you liked Gotenks. I kind of figured that Super Keio-Ken with a SSJ4 would be a pretty large boost, but really I just needed to put the two of them at near equal footing and that was the only way I could think to do it.

Nadz: I'm glad you liked the fight. Writing Gotenks was annoyingly difficult for some reason.

Rejhan: I'm really glad you liked the fight, it was one of my more work intensive scenes, I rewrote several large chunks of it more than once.

Draco the Destroyer: Well, I can pretty much garentee you that Goku won't return physically. In the last story he sort of showed up during Goten's big fight, but it was more of a vision thing. If he does make any sort of return it would have to be like that to keep the GT continuity going (not that I'm really concerned about that). I'm glad you liked Gotenks; he was annoying to write, but everyone seems to like him, so I guess I did okay. As for Akira and Pan getting married or even getting back together...it's sort of hard to say. At the moment, she's dead and hates him, so they have some pretty big hurtles to get over before they can think about marriage. We'll just have to wait and see what happens (even I don't know exactly what's going to happen there).


	26. Akira is Destroyed

Chapter Twenty-Six: Akira is Destroyed

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"Hello Brother."

Akira backed away from the figure that stepped out of the shadows; his whole world seemed to be falling in around him. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

"What's the matter? Surprised to see me...or should I say 'you'?" Akira's own voice asked him.

"T,that's impossible," Akira whispered.

The young man before him smiled, it was a smile Akira had often seen in the mirror; the man before him looked identical to him, even down to his clothes, though there was something strapped to the man's back that was hard to make out in the dim light.

"What are you?" Akira demanded as realization that this was the person that had killed his friends. "You can't be my brother, that's impossible."

"Would you prefer that I call you sister?" the young man asked with a smirk, his tail swishing behind him. "Or maybe 'mother' would be more up your alley?"

"What. The. Fuck. Are. You?" Akira asked through clenched teeth.

"I'm you, in a manner of speaking."

"What are you talking about?" Akira asked, dropping into as much of a fighting stance as he could muster, though with a broken arm and who knows how many other injuries he was obviously in no condition to fight.

"Boy, you sure are stupid," the other Akira said as he rolled his eyes. "I look just like you, what do you think I mean? I'm as much you as your blood could produce."

"You're...you're like some sort of...clone?"

The clone clapped, "Bingo! See, that wasn't that hard, now was it?"

Akira's vision was beginning to blur, the loss of blood was making him light headed and the murderer's words didn't make any sense to him. "How is that possible?" he asked weakly.

"Is it really that important?" the clone asked. "The point is, I'm here, and soon you won't be. With your death, the Saiyan race will finally be extinct, the billions of people killed by your race over the years will finally rest in peace, and my father will be able to rebuild the Arlean society, returning it to the glory that it always should have held."

"But you're a Saiy—"

Before Akira could finish, the clone appeared in front of him and punched him in the stomach, cracking his ribs and sending him crashing to the ground.

"Don't you dare say that!" the clone yelled, "I may look like you, but I am no monkey."

Akira didn't really hear what the clone was saying, he was too busy coughing up blood and trying to remain conscious. It took him a few minutes to recover enough to regain the ability to speak.

"Why was I dreaming of this before it happened? How were you in my head?"

"Ah, the million zeni question. I tell you what; touch your head just behind your left ear."

Akira did as he was told, he could feel a small bump, but that was it. "I don't feel anything," he said in confusion.

"You don't feel the bump?" The clone took Akira's look of surprise as a 'yes.' "That bump is the top of a small robot that nestles into your skin; it probably felt like a mosquito bite when it happened, if you even noticed it at all. The robot allows my creator to influence you. It was originally used to control slaves, but a Saiyan mind is surprisingly strong. While you were rested and awake, you had enough will power to resist the impulses; however, when you were asleep, your mind was open and defenseless." The clone smiled at Akira's confusion, "Originally you were supposed to be the killer. Unfortunately after several failed attempts, my master realized that you wouldn't give in for a long time, if ever, and he grew impatient. Thus, the honor of extinguishing the Saiyans was not yours."

"But...but why?" Akira asked, "Why me? Why the Saiyans? What did we ever do to this 'master' of yours?"

The other Akira looked down at the injured fighter with a scowl. "Enough talk, it's time to end this once and for all." The clone reached back and pulled a red handled sword out of its sheath, identical to the one that had been driven through Vegeta's chest.

Akira forced himself to his feet. "I'm going to kill you," he promised, "You took my entire life away from me, my friends, my family...Pan. I will crush you." He started to power up, his hair becoming spiky and golden, but then his hair fell and remained black.

"Well," the clone said with a raised eyebrow, "that was entertaining. Now, let me show you how it's done." His hair stood on end and turned golden, his eyes becoming aqua.

Akira backed away in fear; he couldn't feel the other fighter's power level, the clone had his barrier as well as his appearance.

"Don't worry, this will be quick," the clone promised.

Suddenly he was behind Akira; a quick jab sent the young man flying forward, right into an elbow that drove all the air from his lungs. With a powerful kick, the clone sent Akira into the air and then another punch sent the injured Saiyan crashing face first into the ground. The clone landed next to Akira, grabbed the young man's hair and lifted his head enough to confirm that Akira was already unconscious.

"Pathetic," the clone sneered. "I actually thought you might provide some sort of challenge, but after your fight with the fused one, you're nothing." He threw Akira into the side of a ruined building; the young man cried out as he hit the cement, the sudden burst of pain awakening him from his slumber; he crumpled to the ground. As the clone, idly twirling the sword in his hand, calmly walked towards him, Akira began pulling the last of his energy into his palm.

The other fighter stood over the young man and raised the sword, "Good bye Akira, say 'hi' to Pan for me."

Akira threw his hands up and fired the blast point blank into the clones face.

The explosion from the blast sent Akira flying, but he managed to do a small flip in the air and almost land on his feet before collapsing. He weakly lifted his head and watched as the smoke from the blast cleared; there hadn't been much in the attack, but he hoped the close range had made up for that.

As the last wisps of smoke lifted, the clone was standing exactly where he had been. Smiling.

"Well, that was almost surprising," the other Akira said with a chuckle. "Maybe if you were a little stronger you would have singed my hair. You should thank me for destroying Pan before she found out how weak you really are. I hear Saiyan females will only mate with the strongest male they can find."

Akira painfully climbed to his feet again, thoughts of Pan running through his mind. His whole body shook with rage, but couldn't raise his power level enough to make a difference; he simply didn't have anymore to give.

The clone walked towards Akira once more, this time Akira didn't have the strength or time to create another ki beam. The clone flipped the sword around in his hand and slammed the base of the handle into Akira's chin, lifting the injured Saiyan off the ground. With one quick move, the clone spun and drove the sword into Akira's unprotected stomach.

The Saiyan fell to the ground and screamed in pain, his one good hand pressed tightly against his bleeding stomach. He could feel his intestines slide against his palm as they tried to escape through the hole.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" the clone asked with a sadistic grin. "But does it hurt as bad as this?" He lifted his foot and then brought it down hard on one of Akira's legs, breaking it with a sickening crunch as the young man once again screamed in agony.

It was all Akira could do just to remain conscious in the face of all the pain that was shooting through his body.

The clone squatted down and watched with satisfaction as the young man became weaker and weaker, he could practically see the sense of hopelessness settling over his twin.

'_I'm going to die,'_ Akira realized, _'I won't be able to resurrect the others...and I'll have failed Pan again.'_ He shook his head, he couldn't let that happen, one way or another he had to survive.

With the last of his energy he shot into the sky; not so much 'flying' as using his ki to throw himself into the air, his senses frantically searching for something to latch onto. Suddenly the clone was right in front of him.

"Goodbye brother," the clone said with a smirk and then fired a huge ki blast at Akira.

The last of the Saiyans brought his one hand up in front of his face as the green energy beam exploded around him.

ooo

King Kai's brow furrowed in confusion; he'd felt two energy blasts from Akira, but one of them felt different somehow. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something about the last attack that he'd found unsettling.

He pushed the thought aside and turned back to the crowd of people occupying his planet. Most of the Z Fighters were still staring off into space, unable to believe that an enemy had been able to kill all of them and remove any hope of them being resurrected again. Pan seemed to be taking it especially hard, she'd gone and sat under the tree, glaring at anyone that came and tried to make conversation with her; even Bubbles, who usually liked everyone, wouldn't go near her.

The kai sighed, it was one thing to be betrayed by a friend, but to have someone you love turn against you was a pain that he didn't even want to think about. It would be a long time before the young woman got over this, but fortunately for her, she had all of eternity to work it out.

ooo

The clone waited patiently as the last of the smoke cleared and then dropped to the ground.

"It is done," he said.

"Yes it is," replied an identical voice from the shadows. "The master is waiting..."

"We should return."

Both figures touched their foreheads and vanished.

The End

o

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A/N: Oh, I'm just kidding. Of course this isn't the end! I wouldn't do that to you (opening my email to find 15 flames waiting for me wouldn't be fun), I promised a happy ending or at least a fairly happy ending and I fully intend to deliver on my promise.

I have a question for you all, in a review I received for an earlier chapter, Trisk said that King Kai was 'all knowing,' do you guys see him that way? I've had him in the dark because I thought that all of his play by play with Goku's battle against Freiza was basically just ki sensing (which would explain why he didn't know if Goku was dead or not at the end); thus, King Kai doesn't know whether or not Akira is the killer because he can't sense what Akira is doing. Does anyone know if he can do more than that? I know that Dende sitting on top of the Lookout could see a lot of things happening on earth, but the anime never seemed very specific about the kai's abilities as far as looking in on the planets in their quadrant (the Supreme Kai obviously didn't know everything in the Buu Saga, including the strength of the Saiyans, so I'm going on the assumption that King Kai is just as fallible). I try to keep things in line with the anime, so if anyone ever notices a mistake, please point it out to me. Thanks for all the reviews, you guys are great.

Draco the Destroyer: I hadn't really thought about the non-fighters and fighters being able to meet up. They never did it in the anime, but that doesn't really mean that they couldn't; I'm guessing that those little clouds floating around in Other World weren't all warriors, so I see no reason why they couldn't visit each other.

Donkeykong27: Things can ALWAYS get worse...but they should start getting better...I just have to figure out how.

Everyone Else: I think all of the other reviews I received for the last chapter said the same thing: 'Too bad about Goten and Trunks, but at least now King Kai and the others will know Akira wasn't the killer.' Going back to my Author's Note, I'm not sure that they can know unless both Akira's stop using their barriers; however, in the end, I promise both living and deceased fighters will understand what's happening.


	27. Memories

**Chapter Twenty-Seven: Memories**

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A/N: There are a lot of flashbacks in this chapter; if you're a little confused don't sweat it, it's supposed to be a bit confusing because one of the characters is pretty confused. Hopefully at the end it will make some sense. Just remember, _italics_flashback or thought and you should be fine.

o

It had been almost three days since the last of the Z Fighters arrived on King Kai's planet. With the additions of Trunks and Goten, the kai had finally given in to the inevitable and moved everyone to the Great Kai planet for training. He simply didn't have enough room on his home world anymore.

'_Well, at least they'll be training where West Kai can see, with any luck that stupid, fat midget will finally learn to shut up,'_ King Kai thought as he watched the ten warriors from Earth spar at high speed across the grassy plains of the planet. Several fighters from other quadrants had stopped to stare in amazement at the spectacle, giving King Kai a surge of pleasure. It was sad that all of the Z Fighters and their families had been killed, but it was nice that he would have so many fighters to enter in the next Other World Tournament. Perhaps this year all of the other kais' fighters would be eliminated in the first round; that would give him at least a hundred years worth of bragging rights, if not more.

The only person who really seemed to be slouching off was Pan. The young woman just didn't have her heart in her training.

'_Kind of hard to put your heart into something when it was just broken,'_ the kai mused. He hoped that time would heal the wound, but some injuries just wouldn't mend no matter how long they have. As he watched Yamcha and Chiaotzu gain the upper hand against her, he decided he was going to have to call upon the services of the one person in all of Other World who stood a chance of helping the young Saiyan:

Videl.

ooo

Akira's eyes slowly fluttered open and then quickly squeezed shut again as a blue green liquid stung them. A moment later, he forced his eyes open, ignoring the pain until it ceased, and looked around. He was in some sort of small, metal room, but he couldn't remember how he'd gotten there. Actually, he couldn't seem to remember much of anything.

As he looked around, snippets of memories flashed through his brain, but they were jumbled and confusing. Suddenly, the phrase, 'rejuvenation tank' hit him and he realized that that was where he was, though he still had no idea how he'd gotten there or why his whole body was aching horribly.

A sharp jab of pain in his stomach caused him to look down, there was a long line of stitches where someone had closed a hole, but the wound was obviously still there. At the moment, the only thing the stitches seemed to be doing was keeping the healing fluid away from the areas that needed it.

_A man that looked just like Akira flipped his sword around in his hand and slammed the base of the handle into Akira's chin, lifting the injured Saiyan off the ground. With one quick move, the look-alike spun and drove the sword into Akira's unprotected stomach._

_The Saiyan fell to the ground and screamed, his one good hand pressed tightly against his bleeding stomach. He could feel his intestines slide against his palm as they escape through the hole._

Akira shook his head as the memory faded, suddenly breathing very hard into the oxygen mask, his heart pounding in his chest. For some reason that vision had been far more intense and complete than the images that had been jumping around in his mind since he awoke.

_"Hurts, doesn't it?" the Akira clone asked with a sadistic grin. "But does it hurt as bad as this?" He lifted his foot and then brought it down hard on one of Akira's legs, breaking it with a sickening crunch as the young man once again cried out in agony._

Akira could almost feel the pain from the memory. He glanced down at his leg; it looked bruised even though the tint of the liquid, but other than that, seemed whole. The only thing, besides its appearance, that gave any indication that there was something wrong with it was the horrible itching feeling that accompanied the healing process that the blue-green fluid sped up. As he stared at his leg, he noticed that his arm itched also. The young man turned his attention to his right bicep and was greeted by the sight of another black and blue bruise.

_'Goten did this,'_ he realized, though he wasn't completely sure he knew who Goten was. The words came to his mind quickly if he didn't think about it too hard, but there was no context to connect them to anything solid. Goten could be an enemy, or a friend, or even an inanimate object for all he knew, though 'friend' seemed to sound more right than the other two options.

Akira began examining the rest of him self. Though there were many more bruises and sore spots, he seemed to be all in one piece, but he felt extremely weak and tired.

_'Tired...'_ his left hand went up to his ear instinctively. His head was completely shaved, which surprised him, and there was a long line of hard stitches running down the left side of his head. He wasn't sure what he'd thought he would find there, but it certainly wasn't baldness and stitches.

All through his self examination his eyes had been growing heavier and heavier as sleep tried to claim him again, but he shook the feeling away. He didn't need sleep so much as he needed answers. He hit the internal release button and waited patiently as the healing solution drained out of the chamber and the oxygen mask and several wires and tubes detached themselves from his body as they were retracted into a compartment just above his head. He pushed the small door open and stepped out of the tank, healing fluid dripping off his body and pooling on the floor.

He glanced around the room he found himself it, it looked familiar, but he wasn't sure why. There was a lot of work out equipment and a thin pad on the floor for sparring. Akira had the distinct impression that he'd been in this room before, with someone important, but he couldn't remember who or why.

_"You're going down this time Akira," the raven haired girl said with a grin._

_"I think you're all talk Miss Pan," he replied, dropping easily into his fighting stance._

_"We'll see about that, just remember: no transformations, no ki attacks. Grandpa wasn't very happy after the last time we hung out here."_

_"You were the one that did that! Besides, you know as well as I do that I don't need any of that to beat you."_

_Rather than respond, she launched her self at him with a quick series of punches and kicks. He easily dodged every one of them, not bothering to retaliate as he waited for the right moment._

_Suddenly she grabbed his shirt with more speed than he'd thought she could muster without transforming and tossed him over her shoulder. The young man flipped in the air and landed on softly on his feet._

_"Wow," he said with genuine surprise, "you've gotten a lot stronger."_

_"I have a decent sparring partner," the young woman replied with a wink._

_"Decent?!?" Akira asked with a hint of annoyance, "He's the best sparring partner you've ever had, the best looking too!"_

_"Meh, I guess he's not too ugly."_

_His face took on an air of mock seriousness, "That's it, now you're really going down." _

_Pan ran at him and again threw a punch at his face, he dodged to the side and grabbed her wrist as her fist went by. She swung with the other fist, but once again he eluded her as he captured her other hand. With a quick jerk, he brought her up against his chest._

_"See? All talk," he whispered playfully, and then leaned in and kissed her._

_For a moment she struggled, but then she surrendered to his kiss. He released her hands and slid his fingers up her arms and across her back; her arms went around his neck as they held each other tightly. The raven haired girl's leg slowly worked its way behind him while he was distracted, and then in one quick move, she pushed forward and kicked his lefs out from under him._

_"Oof," he grunted as she landed on top of him. He tried to move, but found that she had pinned his hands above his head._

_"All talk?" she whispered playfully into his ears, her soft, warm breath tickling him slightly._

_"You cheated," he said with a grin as her lips found his._

A tear rolled down Akira's cheek as the memory faded. _'What the hell is wrong with me?'_ he asked himself. He took a deep breath and pushed the feelings of sadness and dispair away; he was sure there was something else he needed to do before he could feel sorry for himself; he just couldn't remember what it was.

That Pan was very important to him was one of the few things that he was completely sure of. Another thing was that she was gone somehow. This person who meant so much to him had been stolen; he didn't know how, or when, or why, but she was gone.

"You shouldn't be up yet," a gruff voice commented from behind him, startling the young man out of his thoughts. Akira spun and found a large man in a robe standing behind him. "Do you know who I am?" the man asked.

Akira stared at the balding man as he thought, he recognized the man, but the name eluded him as did the nature of their relationship. After a moment, he found what he thought was the right word.

"H,Hercule." It was more of a question than a statement.

The man smirked, "It's Mr. Satan, until you join the family," he said. There was a brief pause and then he asked, "So, what do you remember?"

Again Akira was silent as he tried to think, a few violent missions flashed through his mind, but nothing that seemed to make any sense.

Mr. Satan watched the confusion and frustration make its way across the young man's face. "Alright, don't hurt yourself kid. The docs said it would take a while. Actually, he said you'd be a vegetable for the rest of your life, but after he checked in on you a few days later, he upgraded your chances."

"Huh?" Akira was completely lost at this point.

"After your surgery, the doctors all said you wouldn't make it, that you'd lost too much blood and the damage to your brain was too extensive. Of course he didn't know about your special heritage. I guess the Saiyan brain is better at healing itself than the average human's."

The young man's face remained blank; none of this helped him at all.

Mr. Satan walked over to a nearby mini-fridge and took out a sports drink, "You want one?" he asked.

Akira nodded and the former world champion tossed the drink to him, the young man's hand shot out to catch the bottle, but he missed horribly and it fell to the ground. Akira stared at the bottle, he felt certain that he should have been able to catch it with ease.

"Don't worry, that will come back too; just like your memory," Hercule said as he began drinking from his own bottle.

Akira looked up and asked, "What happened to me? Why am I like this? How long have I been out?"

_As the energy beam rushed towards him, Akira's mind finally latched onto a life force; it wasn't much, but it was something. He brought his hand up to his forehead as the green ki blast enveloped him, igniting his nerve endings with a fresh wave of pain, and then he was gone. He didn't know where he was going or really who he would find when he got there; the life force felt familiar, but it was so faint that it was hard to be sure where he'd felt it before._

_When he rematerialized, he only had time to make out a large television before the world grew dark and he collapsed to the floor; oozing blood all over an expensive rug._

There was an edge to the young man's voice that caused the Hercule to look at the Saiyan in surprise. There was a long moment of silence and then Mr. Satan walked to a set of chairs on the far side of the room. The young man watched him go, but didn't move.

"The answer to your last question is three days. The rest of it is kind of a long story, you might want to sit down," Hercule said as he settled in to the chair. Akira nodded and walked over to him, when they were both seated, Hercule asked, "Do you know who and what you are?"

Akira thought for a moment and then said, "I'm Akira...a Saiyan."

Mr. Satan smiled triumphantly, "Those stupid doctors don't know anything I tell ya!"

Akira wasn't sure if he should say something or not, so he just kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the man who seemed to have some answers.

"Okay," the human said as he got down to business, "here's what I know. A couple of weeks ago, Videl...do you remember her? (Akira shook his head) She's Pan's mom...you remember Pan, right? (Akira nodded). Anyway, she called and said that all of you guys were going to be a way for a while. I don't know why, but I think it was something bad. For a while I didn't hear anything from anyone, but then there was a whole bunch of explosions on the other side of the city." Hercule took another sip and then continued, "The news said it was a terrorist attack, but we both know that's a bunch of bull shit."

Akira thought about asking how they knew, but decided against it. Hurcule seemed to get sidetracked easily and the young man wanted answers.

"So, I was watching news reports and getting ready to stop who ever it was that was attacking the city when I hear this sound."

_Hercule sat in a dark room, watching one of his old tournament videos, and occasionally cheering himself on, while he enjoyed his dinner. During a brief pause in one of his battles, in which a younger, hairier Hercule was proclaiming his opponent's immanent defeat, he heard a loud thump behind him. _

_The old fighter turned and glanced around the side of his large chair. He was on his feet in an instant running to the limp form of his granddaughter's boyfriend._

"I turn around and there you are, looking like you just got the hell beaten out of you. So I call the doctor and start bandaging up your wounds myself."

_"Akira, come on man, are you alright?" Hercule asked frantically as he shook the unconscious youth. His hand came away covered in sticky, red blood and he trembled in fear. The balding man ran over to a near by phone, picked it up, hit a button and yelled, "Get up here now!"_

_He slammed the phone down and returned to the young man, babbling incoherently about Akira's needing to live. The young Saiyan's breathing was shallow and his skin was cool to the touch._

_"Hold on Akira, you...you're going to be okay," as Hercule spoke several servants came rushing into the room. After they realized what the big emergency was, one of them quickly called the former-champ's personal physician, while the others tried covering some of the young man's wounds with make shift bandages made from strips of a table cloth._

_Hercule watched them work occasionally shouting encouragement or unhelpful suggestions, all of which were ignored_.

Somehow Mr. Satan's explanation didn't line up with the young man's vague memory of the events, but again he held his tongue.

"When the doctor got here, you were almost dead, but we got you to the hospital and they start working on you. You almost died a few times while they were patching you up, but you just refused to give in, probably thanks to me encouraging you to hang on.

"_Come on Akira, you have to live through this...think of Pan, it would kill her if you died...actually she might kill me if you die, so you REALLY need to live," Mr. Satan was shaking the young man as the last sentence came out._

"_Um, excuse me Mr. Satan, but I really need you to back a way from the patient, his body's been traumatized enough without it being shaken," a bi-speckled doctor said as he forced Hercule away from Akira's limp form._

"_Oh, uh, right...sorry about that..." the champ mumbled as he sat down out of the doctor's way._

"After they had most of your injuries bandaged they took you to the hospital. Then, while they were trying to work on your stomach, you just sat up in the middle of the operating room and started scratching at the side of your head."

"_He's in my head!" Akira screamed as he bolted upright on the operating table, his left hand dug frantically at the side of his face, trying to get at the tiny implant in his brain._

"_Damn it! I told you to sedate him!" a doctor in a green apron yelled at one of the nurses as he tried to push a needle into the young man's right arm. _

"_I did! I gave him exactly what you said to!" a dark haired woman yelled back._

_Akira continued to claw at his skin, hair and blood soon covered his hand as he scratched at himself. The doctor finally managed to get the injection into the Saiyan, but to his surprise, the drugs had little effect._

"_What the hell is this kid on?" the doctor asked, a second later Akira's broken arm lashed out and the man was sent flying across the room._

_Another doctor rushed up behind Akira, with another syringe, this one filled with double the amount that had just been pumped into the crazed Saiyan. The doctor jammed the needle into Akira's neck and injected its contents._

"_Are you insane?" one of the nurses asked in alarm, "you'll kill him with that kind of dosage."_

"_Better him than us," the doctor retorted as the young man finally slipped back into unconsciousness._

"The doctors said it was the weirdest thing they'd ever seen; said it was like you were trying to claw your way into your brain." Mr. Satan took another drink from his bottle, his face slightly green all of a sudden; Akira did his best to remain patient, while he waited for him to continue.

"So, once they have you sedated again, they start trying to clean up what you did to your head and they find a little piece of metal sticking out. The surgeon tried to just pull it away, but it's stuck..." he stood and walked to a locker. "Anyway, long story short, eight hours of surgery later," he pulled a box out and opened it, "they get this off of your brain."

Akira looked into the box. There was a tiny metallic object with dozens of thin, silvery threads sticking out of it.

"What is it?" the young man asked, unsure if he was supposed to recognize the object or not. It certainly didn't seem familiar, but he got an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach as he stared at it.

"No clue," Mr. Satan replied. "The doctor wanted one of his scientist friends to take a look at it, but usually things involving your crowd aren't meant to be broadcast; so I, uh...made it worth the good doctor's while to give both it and you to me and pretend he never saw us. Maybe when Pan..."

_The smell of blood and burnt flesh filled his nostrils as he knelt next to the young woman's broken body._

_Akira thought about picking Pan up, but one look at the large hole in her stomach told him that moving her would do as much harm as good. If he tried to move her she would die, if he left her where she was she would die; there was nothing that he could do._

_He took her hand in his and squeezed it, "Please Pan. Please don't leave me," he whispered lowering his head to hers._

_Even as the words left his lips, he felt her life force fade away. Akira pulled her onto his lap, kissing her bloodied forehead and rocking back and forth as he cried. _

"...and the others come looking for you, they'll be able to fill us in."

_'Please tell me I didn't fail them again,'_ _Akira thought as he flew with all the speed he could muster._

_A few minutes later his fears were realized when he spotted the first body. The young man landed next to what he thought were the remains of Trunks, both of the older Saiyans had been wearing dark pants, so it was hard to tell for sure with the mutilation of the head._

_Akira glanced around and quickly located Goten's body. This one was easier to identify, as only the back of the head and part of his arm were missing._

The young man was silent for a moment and then he said in an even voice, "They aren't coming, they're already dead..."

Hercule, who had been in the middle of an explanation about how the other fighters would be able to help them face off against whatever evil it was that had beaten Akira up so badly, suddenly lost all of the color in his face. "What do you mean?" he asked stupidly.

"Whoever...did this to me, he killed them...all of them," there was little emotion in Akira's voice, he was simply stating facts; with the exception of Pan, his brain hadn't formed any real connection between himself and the other people in the images.

"You're wrong," Hercule said. "There's nothing in the universe that could take out all of them."

Akira looked him in the eye and said, "I saw Pan's body with my own eyes. She's gone." The words cut into his own heart as much as they seemed to cut into the human's.

"You're lying!" the world champ yelled, "Your memories are all scrambled...your confused..."

"I might not remember everything, but I remember that," Akira's voice was eerily calm.

In an instant Hercule had grabbed the young man by the throat and slammed him against the wall. "You said you'd protect Pan...you said you'd keep her safe!"

_A tux wearing Akira rang the door bell to a large house; his hands were shaking slightly in nervousness._

_'Fight an ancient, evil alien bent on universal domination? No problem,' he thought with a small grin, 'but pick up Pan for our first official date and I fall apart before the door even opens.'_

_He was distinctly aware of Bulma standing behind him snapping pictures with her camera. Next to her Vegeta seemed torn between being bored and enjoying the obvious nervousness of Akira; no doubt the young man would be hearing about this night during his training sessions with the Saiyan Prince for weeks to come._

_The door opened and instantly Videl and Chi-chi were hugging him and telling him he looked very handsome as they attempted to fix his unruly hair and straighten his tie. Akira could only sigh as he endured their unsuccessful grooming attempts; he'd already gone through most of this at home with Bulma. At least then Bra, who was also been getting ready for homecoming, had taken some of the attention away from him. _

_Beyond the swarming women he could see Gohan grinning as he watched the whole scene, probably enjoying Akira's discomfort almost as much as Vegeta; Goten and Valese, standing next to Gohan and holding a snoozing baby Kumo, looked like they were about to burst into laughter at the predicament the young man found himself in. On the opposite side of Gohan was Hercule, the former world champion was scowling at the young man, clearly not impressed with what he saw._

_Just as Chi-chi and Videl finally gave up on his hair, Pan, her hair done up in little ringlets and wearing a strapless lavender dress, appeared at the top of the stairs. Akira was dumbfounded. He'd always found her beautiful, but the creature before him was beyond description._

_"You should probably close your mouth before Gohan notices," Goten whispered as he stood next to the shell-shocked Saiyan. Akira dutifully obliged, but his eyes remained glued to the young woman as she slowly walked down the stairs._

_The couple endured nearly an hour's worth of picture taking before they were finally allowed to leave; as the two made their way to Akira's car, the young man was grabbed by a still scowling Mr. Satan._

_"Look here kid," the former champ growled threateningly. "I know you're supposed to be strong, but if you do anything to hurt my granddaughter..."_

_Akira help up a hand and smiled warmly, "Sir, I would never let anything harm her, you have my word."_

Akira looked Mr. Satan's dark red face without the hint of fear; even in his weakened state, the Saiyan was in no danger of being injured by the human. The young man gently placed his hand on Hercule's arm and pushed it away from him, removing the slight pressure on his neck. With a flick of his wrist, the Saiyan sent the balding, old fighter stumbling away from him. Hercule landed in one of the chairs as tears of grief and rage ran down his face.

Akira walked to the window and stared outside, jumbled images and emotions running through his brain. However, through all of the clutter one person seemed to stand out the most: Pan. The knowledge that she was gone, stolen from him by someone who had caused her great pain before she felt the release of death focused his mind. Whoever had done this, whoever had taken so much from him, would pay dearly. Akira would track him/her/it down and rip it limb from limp. Slowly.

"How long until my memories and reflexes are back to normal" he asked quietly.

"The doctors aren't sure, they've never seen anything like you...but they said it would probably at least a few days, maybe weeks, maybe never," Mr. Satan replied.

Akira took in the information without comment and then walked to the rejuvenation tank; he would heal first and then he would get his revenge. "I need you to turn this thing on for me again," he called out to Hercule.

"What are you planning to do?" the human asked.

Akira paused as he climbed into the tank. "I'm going to kill whoever did this...and then I'm going to kill his friends and family...I'll figure out the rest as I go."

He settled into the tank and the healing fluids began to wash over him as the small chamber was flooded with the blue-green liquid. His eyes closed as sleep finally claimed him once more; the Saiyan dreamed violent, blood filled dreams as he had for over a month, but this time he didn't shy away from or struggle against them, this time he embraced them. Only one thing mattered now.

Revenge.

o

o

A/N: After reading all of your reviews, I was really surprised how many people thought that Akira was dead. I wanted it to come off that way, but when I put in the whole 'brought his arm up in front of his face' thing I would give myself away (props to midnight46 who I think was the only one who figured out what had happened). Originally this chapter was almost all dialogue, with Hercule explaining everything to Akira. After it was mostly written I began to think that it would be more interesting to show a lot of the events and/or memories in flashbacks, sometimes with Hercule's (not quite accurate) commentary. I hope it wasn't too terribly confusing; it was kind of a different chapter than I'm usually write and I'm still not sure if I like it (mostly because Hercule seems a bit out of character). As always, thanks for all the reviews!

Draco the Destroyer: I decided to use your idea about the Z Fighters visiting their families in Paradise, that scene will probably happen in the next chapter.

Francis Keenan: Yeah that would be them. I think I misspelled 'Arlean,' but I didn't realize it until I was several chapters into the story. Since I didn't feel like going back through and changing it all, the name has just stayed misspelled, but you're thinking of the right race.


	28. Rejuvenation

**Chapter 28: Rejuvenation**

o

The Z Fighters stepped off of the airplane that had carried them to Paradise and looked around in amazement. The runway was sitting on top of a large hill and situated in such a way that the moment the passengers disembarked they were treated to a breathtaking view of the surrounding area.

Just to the east, a large mountain rose majestically into the cloudless sky; it was covered with soft, green moss and bright flowers. An immense waterfall spilled over one of the cliffs on the mountain, but instead of the expected thunderous, violent crashing at the bottom of the falls, the water simply, and almost silently, flowed into a large stream which meandered its way across the landscape before emptying into a crystal clear lake. The grass, which seemed to cover everything except the bodies of water and the perfectly groomed sandy beaches, was so soft that if any of the Z Fighters had been shoeless they would have had difficulty telling the difference between what they were walking on and a rug made from the finest silks on Earth. To the west a large, leafy, green forest spread out before them, providing shade to any that desired it. Enormous, beautiful flowers lay all around them, giving off sweet, almost intoxicating scents that made it simply a joy just to inhale the air.

Even Vegeta couldn't help but be relaxed by the wondrous place that was so appropriately called Paradise; still there was something missing from it that kept it from being perfect for him.

"Vegeta!"

And then true perfection was achieved and the Saiyan Prince's heart was finally at peace as his wife and daughter were in his arms while his son looked on with a happy smile.

The rest of the Z Fighters' families were not far behind the Briefs and soon everyone was hugging or being hugged.

Valese and Kumo were taking turns hugging Goten, who was hugging them back for all he was worth. Icalla had captured Trunks and was alternating between kissing him and hugging him while he blushed in semi-embarrassment. Pan had been grabbed around the neck by her grandmother and couldn't seem to get free as Chi-chi cried tears of joy while the young woman's face began turning purple from the lack of air. Launch and Tien were enjoying a quiet moment while Chiaotzu and Yamcha were talking with Master Roshi and Oolong; Puar was happily flying circles around Yamcha's head and squealing his name, occasionally stopping and hugging him before returning to the air.

Videl and Gohan were a short distance away from the crowd of people, the Saiyan scholar held his wife close as tears streamed down his cheeks.

"I...I'm so sorry," he whispered in her ear, "I...I killed you...it..."

Videl pulled back and placed a finger against his lips, silencing him. "I don't want you to talk like that ever again," she said sternly, "Akira is the only one who gets any blame in the deaths that happened that night, it wasn't your fault."

"But I di–"

Before he could say another word her lips had rushed up to meet his in a passionate kiss, for a moment he was too shocked to respond, but then his arms circled her waist as he pulled her closer and kissed her properly.

When the couple finally came up for air Videl looked Gohan in the eyes and smiled. "I love you Gohan," she whispered, "For all of eternity I will love you." Gohan smiled back at her, but in his eyes she could still see that he felt guilty, she smirked and shook her head. "If you really need to hear it, then 'I forgive you,' okay?"

The last traces of his guilt vanished and he once again pulled her close and kissed her.

ooo

"So, do you want to talk about it?" Videl asked carefully as she and Pan reclined on the beach. It had been several hours since the Z Fighters arrival and their warm reception, most of the group were being shown the sights, while others were playing in the warm waters of the lake. Those that had been close enough to notice, had made themselves scarce as soon as they saw Videl float towards the brooding young Saiyan.

"I don't think there's anything to talk about," Pan replied stiffly.

Videl gave her daughter a look that only mothers seem to be able to produce, a look that said: 'you aren't fooling anyone.'

Pan noticed the look and sighed, "I guess I just can't get over how stupid I was...I mean, how could I let him fool me like that? Why didn't I see what he really was?"

"Love can make you blind," the human said quietly as she turned and looked out over the beautiful lake, "You shouldn't feel bad for being tricked or for loving him, you couldn't have known what he was...none of us did."

Tears began to form in Pan's eyes as she thought of the last words she had heard before Akira killed her.

_The man laughed, "Me? Love you? Hardly! You were just something for me to play with, nothing more..."_

Videl wrapped her arms around her distraught daughter and hugged her tightly as Pan cried. The two did not move for a long time as Pan poured out all of her grief and rage, all of the pain that seemed to consume her being, into her mothers arms. At times she would simply cry and at others she would confess her fears over what Akira's betrayal had meant about her; through it all her mother held her and soothed her, helping the young woman as only a mother can.

When all of Pan's tears had been shed, she took a deep breath and sat up; she felt better in an odd sort of way, like when one throws up after struggling to hold the bile down for a long time and then feels the relief of no longer having that unpleasant feeling in their stomach. She was still sad and still hurt by what the man whom she had loved had done to her and her friends, but after letting it all out, she was at least on the path to recovery.

The Z Fighters remained in Paradise for two more days, relaxing and enjoying themselves as much as, if not more than, they ever had in life. Finally, on the second day, King Kai informed them that they would need to head back soon; as warriors in possession of their bodies they could not remain in Paradise indefinitely, but would be allowed to return on a fairly frequent basis.

The long, drawn-out good-byes were said, and then the Z Fighters reboarded the plane and headed back to the Grand Kai planet to continue their training, feeling refreshed and rejuvenated and, especially in the case of one dark haired young woman and her father, refocused.

ooo

The slimy, blue-green fluid slid down his skin and splashed on the floor as Akira climbed out of the rejuvenation tank. After nearly three days his body was completely healed, though the scars on his head and stomach as well as the strange lack of hair testified to the trial that he had passed through. His dark eyes scanned the room and then locked onto the large windows facing the city. He walked towards the window, leaving a trail of healing fluid behind him.

He...It...Whatever was out there. The murdering scum that had destroyed everything that the Saiyan held dear, was still on the loose.

Akira's lips unconsciously pulled back, baring his teeth as he ground them together in fury. His days spent in the tank had been hell. The dreams that he'd suffered through during much of the last two months had been nothing compared with the dreams that had haunted him while he healed. At least the previous dreams had ultimately been fake, most of the things he'd seen in the last three days were real and so was the message that always accompanied the dreams:

It's all your fault.

Even now those words cut through him more easily, more painfully, than the clone's sword had and the damage they did was not so easily healed. No amount of time in the rejuvenation tank would make him feel better, no senzu bean would close the gaping hole in his heart; the young Saiyan could only think of one thing that would heal this wound.

Revenge.

"So, you're finally healed," Mr. Satan's said, awakening Akira from a day dream in which he was tearing the clone limb from limb.

The young man glanced over his should at the balding warrior who had brought a tray full of sandwiches with him, and then returned to gazing out the window.

Mr. Satan shuddered slightly at the haunted look in Akira's eyes. The rejuvenation tank had healed the young man's body, but there was obviously little it could do to heal the Saiyan's broken heart. "Uh, are you hungry?" he asked in an attempt to get the young man talking.

"No," Akira replied flatly.

"Um...okay..." an uncomfortable silence settled over the room as neither man spoke for a long time. Finally Mr. Satan cleared his through and asked, "Can you do that thing where you feel his...power or whatever? Is he out there right now?"

"He can hide his ki too well, I can't sense him."

"But if you can't sense him, how are you going to find him?" there was a hint of panic in Mr. Satan's voice. The man had been morning the loss of his entire family for the past three days; only the thought that Akira had promised to kill their murderer once he was healed had kept the former champion going. His family had become his whole life when his 'real' career had ended at the hands of Android 18 during the 25th Tenkaichi Boudoukai (after which he only won because one of the Z Fighters would throw the match) and the suddenness of their deaths tore him up inside. Still, if Akira could kill their murderer, then perhaps he could find peace in the knowledge that they had been avenged.

"I can't find him," Akira said in an even voice, "but he'll find me. I just have to go some where that we can fight, power up, and he'll come running."

"But if you can't feel him, you'll be a sitting duck...he could attack you before you even knew he was there," Mr. Satan pointed out.

Akira frowned, he hadn't really considered that. When the young man envisioned the plan in his mind he had simply gone from powering up to the part where he started the breaking bones and tearing off the limbs of his enemy. However, there wasn't anyway around it, the world was a big place and he didn't want to spend the rest of his life searching it for the murderer.

"Plus," Mr. Satan added, taking one of the sandwiches off the tray, "if he's already beaten you once, how are you going to kill him if you give him that much of an advantage?"

The Saiyan winced. He didn't bother to tell Mr. Satan that Trunks and Goten had beaten the hell out of him, leaving him with barely any power, before the killer arrived on the scene. He had to admit though, if the clone was as strong as him, there was a good chance that allowing himself to be found would tip the scales drastically in his enemy's direction.

A small smile crept over Akira's face, Mr. Satan had made two excellent points...what was the world coming to?

"I'll just have to take that chance," he said as he opened the window. The cool breeze that flowed into the room chilled his still damp skin, sending a small shiver up his spine.

_"It's chilly tonight," Pan said as she snuggled closer to Akira under the blanket they were sharing. The two Saiyans were lying in the dark living room of her parents' house, watching a movie that Akira had brought over._

_The young man smiled, but didn't take his attention off the screen. This was the third time he'd rented this movie and he still had yet to see the whole thing because Pan always got bored and found ways to distract him. He was determined to make it all the way through this time._

_Pan noticed his lack of a real response and smirked. She couldn't understand why he insisted on watching these kung fu movies, both of them were much better fighters than any of the actors on screen and they didn't need silly wires to preform their attacks._

_"I think you should pay attention to me," she whispered._

_"I always pay attention to you," he whispered back, "but I'd really like to see the ending of this movie just once."_

_"I'll make it worth your while," she whispered back playfully._

_Akira's eyes widened slightly and he swallowed nervously, suddenly very uncomfortable and very warm._

_Pan's fingers began running along the young man's tail, which was curled around her waist. Akira's fists clenched tightly and he gasped slightly before clamping his mouth shut. The young woman chuckled lightly as she heard a small purr manage to escape his sealed lips, she loved that noise._

_Suddenly his lips were on her neck, his teeth lightly nibbling on her skin. Pan smiled with pleasure and turned her head slightly to the side, allowing him better access as he continued to nibble and suck on her neck, sending electricity up and down her spine. And then, just as quickly as it had begun, his lips pulled away from her; she was about to ask why he was stopping when he blew cold air onto her damp neck._

_"Hey!" she yelled as she clamped her hand on her chilled skin, "that was really cold!"_

_"Serves you right for messing with my head when your dad is just upstairs," he retorted with a smile as he began tickling her ribs._

_The young woman squirmed as she giggled and then began to retaliate with some tickling of her own. Soon the movie night had dissolved into a wrestling/tickling match with several kissing breaks until Akira's keen ears had picked up the sound of Gohan coming to check on the noise. By the time the older Saiyan came into the room, both teenagers were sitting up and innocently watching the movie._

Akira smiled sadly at the memory. He had regained most of his memories, but there were still holes that were slowly being filled. One hole did not need filling, it was forever seared into his mind.

_Akira appeared in the darkened building and looked around in confusion. It took him a moment to spot Pan's broken, bleeding body, but when he did he was instantly at her side._

_"Pan?" he asked, kneeling next to her and gently touching her bruised face. Her eyes remained closed in unconsciousness, he could feel her quickly slipping away. "Oh Kami! Pan, wake up honey...please, you have to hang on." He looked around frantically, trying to think of what he could do. He wasn't sure where he was in the city (or even what city he was in), so it didn't seem likely that he'd find a hospital in time, but if he didn't do something, Pan would be dead in moments._

_He thought about picking her up, but one look at the large hole in her stomach told him that moving her would do as much harm as good. If he tried to move her she would die, if he left her where she was she would die; there was nothing that he could do._

_He took her hand in his and squeezed it, "Please Pan. Please don't leave me," he whispered lowering his head to hers._

_Even as the words left his lips, he felt her life force fade away. Akira pulled her onto his lap, kissing her bloodied forehead and rocking back and forth as he cried...._

"Thank you for all your help Mr. Satan," Akira said, shaking the vision from his mind. "If I don't come back...well...goodbye."

Hercule opened his mouth to wish the young man good luck, but he had already flown out the window and out of sight.

"Kick his ass Kid," the champ whispered as he stared after the Saiyan.

ooo

Wind whipped around Akira as he flew. It took next to no time to reach a sufficiently deserted area, though the spot he ended up in made him nervous; there were lots of large boulders and mountains that would be easy to hide it.

_'I'll just have to hope he comes out to talk first,_ the young man thought. _'I'm not going to wait to get revenge any longer...one way or another this ends today.'_

Akira lowered himself to the ground, closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the barrier hiding his power vanished, for a brief second he pictured Pan's broken body and then with a roar of rage he became a second level Super Saiyan. The young man's golden aura blazed around him and his aqua colored eyes began scanning the area, searching for any sign of his enemy. He didn't have to wait long.

"So, you lived after all," Akira's voice called out behind him.

The young man turned and glared at the golden haired clone.

"Oh, such anger," the clone said with a smiled. "You know, all of your friends looked at me the same way right before they died...or should I say they looked at _you_ the same way?" The Akira look-alike took a few steps toward the angry young man, still smiling confidently, "Tell me, is it upsetting to know that everyone thinks it was you that killed them?"

Akira's hands curled into fists, his knuckles popping as his hand clenched harder and harder with each word that came from the clone's mouth, but he did not respond.

"I think Pan was truly my greatest work...when I found her crying beside her dead parents I almost killed her right there, but then I thought it would be fun to string her along for a while. She thought you were being so kind and caring, she would have done anything for me...it made the look in her eyes just before I blew a hole in her stomach that much sweeter. It was amazing, I thought the looks of betrayal in Bulma and Vegeta's eyes were perfect, but the sight of Pan's heart breaking when she realized that you had killed everyone and had just been playing with her heart for years...well, it was just priceless."

Akira's whole body was shaking with rage now.

"If she hadn't been a Saiyan I think I would have...had some _'fun'_ with her before I killed her...I'm pretty sure a whore like that wou–"

In an instant Akira had crossed the gap between himself and the clone and slammed his fist into his double's face. The clone was sent flying, but managed to flip in the air and land on his feet a short distance away.

The clone smirked and rubbed its jaw, "Well, it looks like you're completely healed. Now the question is, are you really strong enough to beat me?"

"I don't plan on beating you," Akira growled, "I'm going to kill you."

The clone's smirk did not fade in the slightest, "Maybe...we have yet to really see you at full power, so I can't be sure that you won't kill me, but do you really think that if you are able to, it will be the end? I'm only the weapon that is being used against the Saiyans, but the wielder of the weapon will still be out there."

"If you don't know if you can beat me, why are you here? Why come out of hiding and throw your life away?"

"It's not my life to hold on to. I was given life by my creator, if he asks that I give it up, then I obey without question...but I don't really think that you can do it, I just said it was possible."

Akira almost felt sorry for the clone, to live one's life without freewill must have been a truly sad existence; then the image of a battered and bloody Pan appeared drifted through his mind and all sympathy for the clone vanished. His muscles flexed slightly as he dropped into his fighting stance; the clone mirrored his movements almost perfectly, but its stance was slightly different than Akira's.

The two warriors stared at each other, one smirking confidently, the other burning with rage, and then they shot forward simultaneously.

Akira's battle for revenge had begun.

o

o

A/N: Sorry this took **Forever** for me to get out. My computer had some issues (which are still not quite fixed), on top of that school got kind of crazy on me. And if that wasn't enough, this chapter was a pain in the ass to write. I don't know if I'd say I was suffering from writer's block or not, but several of the scenes in this chapter were rewritten about four or five times. Anyway, hopefully I'm past that so I can get back to finishing this story. If anyone knows anything about Saiyan hair growth (other than Vegeta saying it remained in the same style forever) I'm interested in hearing if you think Akira's hair could grow back. I'm not opposed to him being bald, but I had planned on having it return, at least in some extent.

Toni the Mink: I'm not sure if Saiyan's hair grows back or not. I mean, I know Vegeta said a Saiyan's hair never changes (once he got out of the Time Chamber in the Cell Saga), but it looks like it grows as they age at least. We see pictures of both he and Goku when their kids and they don't seem to have exceptionally longer hair in those pictures, so the hair grows enough to keep it looking roughly the same length in relation to the rest of a Saiyan's body. Perhaps it just grows really, really slowly until it reaches a certain length and then it stays there. I've been picturing Vegeta with his hair grown back in this story and it predecessor, so unless some one has heard Vegeta or another Saiyan say that Saiyan hair doesn't grow at all and any hair cut is permanent, I'm going to assume that it does grow back eventually. If some one does know for a fact that it doesn't I'll have to make a chapter titled: 'Akira get's a toupe'

Legend: I'm glad that you caught that, it's actually kind of important in a way.

Draco the Destroyer: I hope that scene worked out well, it was a pain to write (actually when I buckled down and forced myself to write it, it wasn't so bad).

Nicole: Thanks so much for taking all the time to read my stories. Especially thanks for reviewing the Ammit Saga, I know it's done and all, but I still love getting reviews for it. Actually after reading your review I went back and read everything that I had written for both stories, it was weird (its been so long since I read it, it was like reading someone else's work). It was a lot of fun to see my writing get better as that story went on (the beginning seemed almost laughable at times, but I liked the end a lot).

Everyone Else: Thanks for all your reviews and sorry again for how long it took me to update, I'll do my best to stick to the once a week updating as best I can. Anyway, thanks again, you guys are awesome.


	29. Akira vs Akira

Chapter 29: Akira vs. Akira

o

A/N: I'm naming the clone 'Clone Akira' as I had to either do that or just write 'the clone' over and over again (which I end up doing anyway, but this way its not quite as bad).

o

"Vegeta, cut it out!" Yamcha said as a finger flicked his ear from behind.

"I didn't do it, moron!" the Saiyan Prince retorted with a smug grin on his face.

Yamcha scowled at the Saiyan, "Yeah, then who did?"

Goten and Trunks, who were sitting next to Vegeta, turned away with angelic looks of innocence, made all the more perfect by the halos above their heads.

Vegeta glanced at them, rolled his eyes, and sighed. "I'm surrounded by idiots," he muttered under his breath.

King Kai was sitting near the back of the plane watching the whole scene and trying to surpress his giggling, when he felt something odd coming from Earth. Normally the Kai had to intentionally focus on a planet to sense a ki signature there, but this time, the life force was burning so brightly that it was impossible for him to not notice it. He closed his eyes and tried to turn the ki that he was sensing into an image in his mind, but the sight that he could picture didn't seem to make any sense. Unfortunately the image didn't last long, but it felt like Akira had powered up and the image that had popped into his head was of a bald version of the young Saiyan.

"Are you alright King Kai," Pan asked, glancing at kai who had a look of intense concentration on his face.

The kai blinked behind his sunglasses and then said, "Er, yes, of course..."

The young woman raised an eyebrow, but did not press the issue further.

ooo

The clone's fist grazed the side of Akira's hairless head, the the young Saiyan's fist found it's mark as he delivered a crushing blow to his enemy's face. The clone was sent flying into a nearby boulder, reducing it to rubble in an instant, but the murderer was quickly on his feet, his smirk replaced with a look of anger and annoyance as he spit blood out of his mouth. Akira noticed that the clone had a sword strapped to his back again, he hoped it would stay there.

"Perhaps I should take this a little more seriously," Clone Akira said. His hair lengthened slightly and his muscles became more chisled as he ascended to level two.

Akira's only response was to power up as well, matching his duplicates level. He wasn't in a rush to see where his enemy's power would max out; if the two of them were close to being equal in power then he wanted a chance to adjust himself to the clone's fighting style and hopefully get some insight into his moves before things got too intense. The young Saiyan continued to glare at the clone with hatefilled eyes, waiting for him to make the next move.

The clone shot forward, throwing a ki blast as he raced towards Akira. The young man swatted the blast aside, but took a kick to the face; he stumbled back a few steps, but recovered in time to block Clone Akira's next series of attacks. After blocking and dodging as many of the punches and kicks from the clone as he could, Akira went on the offensive; driving his enemy back with a quick series of punches and kicks, and forcing the clone to adopt a more defensive stance, but still not managing to do any real damage. The two appeared to be equal in almost every way.

After several minutes, the two warriors hopped away from each other, as they rethought their strategies; neither was breathing hard or suffering from anything more serious than a few minor scratches. The two nearly identical fighters slowly circled each other, each waiting for the other to make the next move.

"Do you know what that whore's last words were?" Clone Akira called out. "She was begging for her life, crying like a small child," the clone's voice changed to a horrible impersonation of Pan's voice, "and she said, 'Oh _Akira_, please don't do this. I don't want to die...I'll do _anything_ if you'll let me live."

Akira's face twisted into an angry snarl as he shot forward in a blind rage. His fists lashed out at blinding speeds, but were being thrown so recklessly that, while a few did connect and do some damage, all he really succeeded in doing was to become off balance with no hope of defending himself.

The clone backed away from the initial onslaught, his eyes sparkling with triumph, as he waited for the right opening. Suddenly his knee shot up and slammed into Akira's stomach, the young man instictively began to double over, but before he could, the clone had spun and driven his elbow into Akira's face. The young Saiyan stumbled back for a moment as stars exploded in front of his eyes, he shook his head to clear them away, but before he was fully recovered, a vicious uppercut hit him in the chin and lifted him off the ground.

The clone's smirk returned as he brought a ki covered fist back and then drove it into Akira's defenseless body. There was a large explosion and a loud crack that sounded like thunder as the attack struck the young Saiyan and sent him flying.

Akira tumbled through the dirt for what seemed like an eternity before finally coming to rest against a large rock. He took several deep breaths as he tried to push his rage away so he could fight with a clear mind; it was not an easy task, everytime he looked at the clone he saw _Her_ death. He slowly climbed to his feet and waited for Clone Akira to show himself.

"You know, when I felt you power up, I really thought this was going to be a challenge," the clone's voice called out a behind Akira, "but you're nothing. It's a good thing your little bitch isn't around, she'd be really disappointed in how weak you've become."

Akira's jaw muscle flexed as the words assulted his ears; his breathing was no longer slow, it was coming out in short, shallow breaths as he struggled to control his rage. Suddenly, golden hair sprouted from his head and ran down to his shoulders as his eyebrows vanished; the Super Saiyan Three chared forward in a berserk rage.

"Idiot," the clone said with a smirk as red fur covered his body and his eyes became yellow. With a quick backhand, the level four Super Saiyan sent Akira into a nearby small mountain. The clone's hand glowed and then he fired a large ki blast after Akira, reducing the mountain and the surrounding area to rubble. The clone smiled as he rose into the air, powering up an even larger ki blast.

"Now die!" the clone yelled as he fired the enormous green blast at the ruins of the mountain which Akira was trapped under.

The entire planet shook as the blast ripped into the ground and exploded. Many of the surrounding mountains collapsed under the force of the shockwave as an immense mushroom cloud rose into the air.

Clone Akira waited patiently for the smoke to clear; smiling as his yellow eyes fell upon the sight of the massive crater that now oppupied the area where the mountain had once stood.

"Far too easy to be satisfying," the red furred warrior said as it dropped to the ground, it began to walk towards the huge whole in the ground when suddenly a ball of glowing golden energy rose out of the crater. The clone's eyes grew wide in surprise.

"Don't think this fight is even close to finished," Akira said, his now bulky muscles were covered in red fur and his yellow eyes continued to burn with hate as he glared at his enemy, "I still have plenty of power left."

Clone Akira quickly covered up his surprise and began to smile, "Good, I would have been disappointed if you put up less of a fight than Vegeta."

Akira didn't answer, he simply charged forward with seemingly reckless abandon. The muscles in the clone's arm tensed as it readied itself to attack the enraged Saiyan. Then, the instant before Akira was the clone's range, the young Saiyan fired a ki blast into the ground, kicking up a large dust cloud. The Akira Clone instinctively raised his hands to sheild his eyes, leaving himself wide open to Akira, who had dodged to the right as soon as he fired the ki blast and was now charging in from the clone's side.

The young man delivered a powerful kick to the clone's face, which sent him flying. Akira didn't back off for a second as he charged after his dazed enemy. As soon as he caught up with the clone, he grabbed him by the leg, swung him around, and then slammed him face first into the ground.

Akira landed a short distance away, threw his hands in front of himself and yelled, "Sei Kaze!" as he fired a massive, red ki blast at his enemy.

Just before the blast struck home, the clone pushed off the ground and flew into the air, narrowly avoiding the deadly attack.

Once again the two enemies faced off, glaring angrily at each other.

A gentle breeze kicked up a small cloud of dust and leaves, sending it tumbling between the two warriors; identical pairs of yellow eyes narrowed simultaniously as they glared at each other. The world seemed to stop spinning as the twin fighters' muscles tensed and then launched them forward as they rushed at each other. Fist struck fist, the force of the power thrown into the attacks caused the ground around them to tremble. The two raced along the ground and through the air as they attacked and counterattacked, appearing to be little more than two golden comets colliding over and over.

Akira was the first to land a significant blow, connecting with a vicious punch to his enemies face, but before he could enjoy his small victory the clone had spun and belted the young man across the face with a violent kick. Both fighters fell away from each other momentarily, but the twin warriors quickly resumed their assults.

Akira growled as he shot forward and drove his knee into the clone's stomach and then slammed his elbow into the back of the clone's head. Clone Akira was sent to the ground, he shook his head, looked up and then dove to the side as the enraged Saiyan's foot came down right where the clone had once been; the ground cracked under the force of the blow in all directions. Akira quickly charged after his enemy, who nimbly hopped to the side as the Saiyan reduced a large boulder to dust with a wild punch.

Akira threw several more punches and kicks, but in his rage he couldn't seem to land a blow. As the young man went for another attack, the clone dodged to the side and then kicked Akira in the face, sending him into the side of a nearby mountain; the force of the kick pushed the young man nearly a foot into the dirt and rock of the cliff face. Akira shook his head as he tried to regain his bearings inside the body-shaped hole.

Clone Akira floated over to the young man and smiled, "Well _brother_, I guess this answers the question of which of us is really the strongest. I don't know why my master was so concerned about you; you're pathetic."

"Ahhhh!" Akira yelled as he powered up, destroying the cliff that surrounded him. The Super Saiyan floated out of the semi-sphere shaped hole that he had formed and scowled at his duplicate. "Don't think that you've won this fight yet," he said in a low voice, "Like I said before, I still have plenty of energy."

The clone's smile faded and his eyes narrowed as if he were trying to figure out whether or not Akira was telling the truth.

Akira shot forward and the two once again sped through the air as they punched and kicked, dodged and blocked.

After nearly five minutes of unrelenting attacks, Akira reared back and threw a powerful punch, but the clone caught it before it could find its mark; Akira tried with his other hand, but that one was caught as well. With lightening fast speed, Clone Akira brought his knee up as he pulled down on the young man's arms, the knee slammed into Akira's face, breaking his nose. The clone drove his knee into the dazed Saiyan's face several more times before throwing him to the ground far below.

Akira flipped in the air and landed in a kneeling possition with such force that the ground around him collapsed. The young Saiyan quickly hopped out of the hole and dropped into his fighting stance again as his enemy landed in front of him.

As soon as Clone Akira was on the ground the two fighters shot towards each other, fists raised. Akira swung first, but the clone ducked and then threw a powerful uppercut that Akira dodged. The Saiyan sent a kick at Clone Akira's head, but the clone ducked again and attempted to sweep the Akira's leg out from under him. The Super Saiyan hopped backwards, doing a flip in the air, landing on his feet, and then charging forward once again. Just as Akira started to swing at his enemy, the clone vanished and then reappeared above him, driving his elbow into the young Saiyan's back. Akira crashed to the ground, but didn't stay down long.

Clone Akira shot forward and sent a kick at Akira's chest, catching the young man off guard and winding him for a moment; the clone stepped back and then threw a punch at the Saiyan's face. Akira looked up at the oncoming attack and vanished as the clone's fist passed through his after-image. Clone Akira whirled around just in time to see Akira launch a ki blast into his chest.

The clone was sent skipping along the ground like a stone over water from the force of the blast, before finally slamming into the base of a tall mountain. For a moment, Clone Akira lay very still before finally rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself up, blood running out of his mouth and pooling on the ground. The clone climbed to his feet and glared at Akiar who was still standing at the spot where he had launched the ki blast.

Both fighters charged towards each other once again. The clone swung, but his fist was caught by Akira who at the same instant had his own punch caught by the clone. The two clasped hands and pushed against each other, neither willing to let the other push him back. The ground beneith them trembled and then collapsed in an ever expanding crater as the two super powers struggled to force the other to his knees. For a moment it seemed to be a stalemate, but then slowly Clone Akira's arms began to shake and then bend.

Akira smiled for the first time since the battle had begun, with their skin touching, he could now feel his enemy's strength. "I certainly hope this isn't all you have," he said through clentched teeth as he continued to push.

The clone didn't answer, but his eyes betrayed his desperation.

Akira's red fur shimmered for a second and then became gold as he ascended to the next level; his now metallic blue eyes burned with blood lust. He had the upper hand and he knew it now.

What had once been a stalemate was now a one sided battle as Akira forced the clone to his knees. With a quick jerk the clone pulled his hands free and then tried to throw a ki blast at Akira, but the powerful Super Saiyan was already behind his enemy.

"You killed my friends and family," the young man whispered into the clone's ear, "You took everything from me..."

The clone spun and threw a punch, but it mearly passed through a fading after-image. Clone Akira could feel the young man behind him; he turned again, but before he had a chance to attack, Akira's hand shot out and grabbed the clone by his throat. The Super Saiyan lifted his enemy into the air and then slammed him into the ground with earth shattering force.

"And now, I think, every hurt you inflicted on them will be repaid a thousand times over!" Akira growled angrily.

ooo

"Should I introvene Master?" a figure asked from the shadows of a cave.

"No, do nothing. It is imperative that we know the full power of the last Saiyan."

o

A/N: Hmmm, I'm not sure if I really like this fight scene, but I don't know why. Oh well, I messed with it and added more stuff and still don't like it, but it's the best I can do, I guess. No need to tell me that Akira should have gone straight to full power instead of drawing things out, I've seen enough fights in DBZ to know that they almost never do that, no matter how pissed they are (plus this chapter would have been even shorter that way and no one wants that). Anyway, Akira knows he's stronger than his clone now, so the next chapter will be full of revenge style goodness (or badness, I guess, since revenge isn't exactly a good thing).

Since everyone who wrote a review and weighed in on Saiyan hair growth seemed to agree with me that it grows back to a certain length, that's the assumption I'll go by. Akira's hair (or lack there of) isn't exactly pivotal to the plot, so if at a later time some one writes in with some sort of evidence that it doesn't grow, I'll happily change what few references to it there are.Thanks for reading this chapter, hopefully it doesn't suck too much. Sorry this chapter took so long to come out, it took a while to come together and then had issues everytime I tried to post it, but the next chapter should be out around Saturday or Sunday...I think (unless I'm too bloated from gorging on turkey and am unable to get out of bed).

LauraNeatO: I'm glad you liked that scene, it just sort of randomly popped into my head and since Pan was already dead I figured I'd use it as a memory. I like it a lot too, I think it's one of my favorite scenes in this whole story.

The Tiny: Of course everything worked out nicely, it's Paradise. Actually, I just figured that Videl wasn't so dumb as to think her husband was at fault when he was obviously trying to save her.

Draco the Destroyer: I guess it depends on what you plan on upgrading your pen name to. If you're going to change it to Bob the Toilet Guy (well, actually that would be kind of funny) then I would advise against it, but if it's going to be something cooler than DtD, then I guess go for it. I happen to like your pen name, but change isn't always a bad thing.

Nadz: Well, they had just had the tar beaten out of them, so their ability to reason might have been a little off, but I did write that scene that way for a reason...though not a terribly important one.

Anouk: So many questions, but all will be answered eventually. I agree that it sucks they can't be with their family and friends whenever they want, but its not like they never get to see them. The warriors got to keep their bodies and train, so they give up a little something in return for that, but they still get to visit at least. I was a little concerned about the whole Paradise/Great Kai Planet thing because the show was really ambiguous about what you can do in Other World or why some people end up in one place and others somewhere else. I just went with what sounded sort of right.

Francis Keenan: Take the clone to Oher World? Now that would be too easy, actually the way that everyone that's dead finds out that Akira didn't really kill them will be pretty easy too, but that's for a later chapter. Mostly Akira wasn't worried about clearing his name, he just wanted to kill the clone.

donkeykong27: I don't know much about amnesia either, but I didn't want to drag it out so I figured I'd just cut to the chase and if anyone questions the length of the amnesia I'd say, 'He's a Saiyan, they heal faster.' Originally there wasn't going to be any amnesia, but I looked up a 'map' of the brain and realized that the parts of the brain that I had the probe-thing sitting would really screw up his head if it had to be taken out. So I made the chapter where he's remembering things (it was pretty fun to write, actually).


	30. Revenge

**Chapter 30: Revenge**

o

A/N: Sorry this took a little longer to get to gether than I thought it would, but it's also a bit longer than the last few chapters have been. Also, Akira's revenge in this chapter gets a little gross...probably more descriptive than the deaths of everyone else also, just to give you a little heads up.

o

The clone leapt from the hole that Akira had thrown him into and charged at the Saiyan angrily. The two warriors flew through the air and along the ground faster than any eye could have followed; Akira always on the retreat, the clone continuously on the attack. Clone Akira's fists were moving so fast they only left a red blur in the air, but to the powerful Saiyan they were moving so slow it was boring. After several minutes of dancing around his enemy's attacks, Akira decided to let the clone know exactly how wide the gap between the two of them was.

The clone threw another punch which Akira dodged, but as he dodged, he threw a punch of his own. Clone Akira's eyes grew wide as a fist materialized a fraction of an inch away from his face; even though the blow never landed, the wind that it produced blew the clone's hair back.

Akira grinned and then faded away. The clone managed to get a confused look on his face before a kick from above sent him plummeting to the ground.

The golden haired warrior landed next to the hole Clone Akira was lying at the bottom of; he glanced down at the still prone fighter and smiled evilly. "It's a good thing you were stronger than most of my friends, because you're a terrible fighter. You might look like me and even have a little of my power, but really you're nothing but a cheap imitation."

The clone slowly climbed to his feet, looked up at Akira, and scowled. He powered up and charged out of the hole at the young man, who nimbly hopped to the side and then backhanded Clone Akira into a nearby mountain.

The clone was dazed for a moment, but Akira didn't press his advantage, he was going to draw this fight out and make sure the clone suffered before he was allowed to expire. After a moment, Clone Akira seemed to regain his bearings; he shot forward with his fist raised. Akira once again side stepped the attack, but this time he lifted his knee and drove it into the clone's stomach. Clone Akira gasped and clutched his stomach as his eyes comically bulged out; Akira looked at him for a moment, shook his head, lifted both hands above his head, and then brought them down on the clone's back, driving him into the ground once again.

"This is really getting boring," the young man called down into the hole, "If you aren't going to at least try to put up a better fight I'm just going to end this."

Once again the clone climbed to his feet and floated out of the hole. "This fight isn't over yet," the clone sneered. "Your transformation may have given you the advantage for now, but you're still going to die," he leaned forward and smiled through the blood that was running down his face, "just like all the others."

Akira bared his teeth in rage, but the clone continued his taunting.

"You might kill me, but there will be another, and another, and another. They'll just keep coming until you are as dead as the friends you failed to protect! The Saiyan race will fall and then the universe will finally be at peace!"

Akira was in front of the clone in an instant, with a huge uppercut he sent the clone soaring into the air. He shot after his enemy, catching up to him quickly, then did a small flip in the air and kicked Clone Akira back towards the ground. The earth shook with the force of the impact as the ground cracked in all directions and a huge dust cloud rose into the air. The enraged Saiyan dropped from the sky and landed next to the hold the clone had just created.

Akira stared down at the prone clone with hate-filled eyes; golden lightening crackled around the young Saiyan's body as he reached into the hole, pulled his enemy out, and tossed him over his shoulder haphazardly. Clone Akira landed in a heap, but quickly pulled himself to his feet and started to back away from the enraged Saiyan who was slowly walking towards him. The clone turned to run, hoping to put some distance between himself and the powerful warrior, but the moment he turned he found himself staring into the cold, metallic eyes of Akira.

"Where are you going?" Akira asked as his fist buried itself in the clone's stomach.

Clone Akira coughed up blood and would have dropped to his knees if Akira's other fist hadn't slammed into his face, knocking him on his back.

Akira reached down, grabbed the clone by the neck with his left hand, and pulled him up to eye level. The two stared at each other for a moment, the clone's eyes were unfocused from the two blows he had taken from the young man, Akira's eyes had a discomforting crazed look to them. The staring match was broken by Akira's right fist crashing into the clone's face over and over. The young man was just holding the clone up by the neck and using his face as a punching bag.

ooo

"Master please! Let me teach this Saiyan a lesson!" the shadowy figure begged.

"No!" a shorter shadow said as it stood next to the first, "You were created with more strength, but I do not know if you can match the Saiyan yet. In our war there will have to be sacrifices...your brother's death will be the key to a glorious new universe. He will be remembered as a hero of our cause." The shorter shadow held up a metal device and spoke into it, "My son, I know that you are in pain and wish to leave this battle, but you must stay and force the Saiyan to show you as much power as possible. Only when we know the full capabilities of our former puppet will we be able to eradicate the plague from existence."

ooo

The clone fell into a pool of his own blood when Akira finally stopped pounding on the defenseless fighter. He no longer looked as much like Akira, his nose had been flattened and smeared across his face, his eyes were nearly swollen shut, blood flowed freely from dozens of cuts all over his face, his cheek bones had caved in under the continuous assault giving him an unnatural appearance, and his neck had five dark bruises, where the Saiyan's fingers had gripped him, which were oozing blood and puss. Despite all of his injuries, the clone nodded just slightly, grimacing at the pain in his neck, to let his master know that he had received the message loud and clear. Clone Akira reached back and pulled his sword from its sheath, then climbed to his feet and readied himself to attack.

Akira smiled at the sight of the sword, "Do you really think that is going to help you? I'm not exhausted from not sleeping and fighting Goten and Trunks this time. Maybe you should at least wait until I turn my back; a coward like you doesn't stand a chance against a true warrior in a fair fight."

The clone ignored the insults and rushed forward, twirling the sword expertly.

Akira dodged from side to side, a twisted smile on his face, as the clone swung the sword at him in a desperate attempt to score some sort of hit. Finally, the young man grew tired of the game and stood perfectly still as the blade came down on him, the sword hit his forehead and shattered after making only a small cut.

Akira gently touched his head, feeling the tiny trickle of blood running down his face; he smiled at the startled expression on the clone's face.

"Well, that actually kind of hurt."

The clone shot straight up into the air, Akira watched him curiously, knowing that he could catch him in a heart beat if he thought it was trying to escape.

"You are the stronger fighter Saiyan, but even you are not unbeatable," Clone Akira said as he cupped his hands and powered up, green energy forming in his hands.

Akira actually allowed himself to chuckle, "You think that's going to hurt me?"

"No, but it will take out the planet and then we'll both be dead...Fukushuu!" The powerful green beam shot from his palms and raced towards the ground.

Akira was under it in an instant, "You still don't know what you're dealing with, do you? Sei Kaze!"

The green ki beam was pushed back by the seemingly unstoppable force of Akira's red ki blast. The young man smiled as his blast overtook the spot in the sky where the clone had stood, though a part of him hoped Clone Akira would survive; he would have felt cheated out of his revenge if he killed the clone so quickly and easily.

As the enormous flow of energy from his hands slowed and then ceased all together, his eyes caught the faintest flicker of movement off to his left. Akira turned just as the clone's hand latched onto his arm.

ooo

The small cave lit up as a small screen began flashing with enormous numbers.

"This isn't possible," the taller figure said as he watched the computer come to a final estimate of the power it was reading. "He could probably defeat me and all the others!"

"True...for the moment," an insect-like alien said calmly as he also observed the numbers. His body was covered in scars and one antennae was missing; wires stuck out from several parts of his exoskeleton, unnecessary reminders of a past he could never forget and would never forgive. "However, now we know what we are striving for. It may take some time, but I will perfect the system until I am able to create brothers for you that will be able to help you finish off the last of that accursed race."

ooo

King Kai had been in the process of getting off the plane when he felt the enormous force radiating from Earth. The power was so startling that he stumbled and fell into Yamcha, who was just below him on the stairs leading down to the runway, causing a chain reaction that ended with a large crowd of people falling on top of Vegeta, who had the misfortune of being at the bottom of the stairs. After some cursing that would have made even the demons of HFIL blanch, the Saiyan Prince powered up, sending all of the helpless passengers, as well as the plane itself, flying through the air.

As he sat up and rubbed the back of his head, the Kai thought about the image that had appeared in his mind the moment he'd felt the ki blast, or more accurately: 'ki blasts.' There had been two people, both felt like Akira, but one looked slightly off, his hair looked wrong.

King Kai shook his head, that didn't make any sense. In truth, he couldn't even be sure that it was accurate, getting images and reading power levels with only ki blasts to go by was highly inaccurate at best, and often straight up wrong, as there were so many things that could interfere with a clear reading.

Regardless of the image's accuracy, there was no doubt that something strange was going on back on Earth.

_'Actually,'_ the Kai thought, _'There's always something strange happening on that planet, so I guess this is just same old, same old.'_

ooo

"You can feel it can't you?" Akira asked as he pulled his arm away from the clone's grasp, "There is a difference between us that you have no hope of overcoming. You have no chance of surviving this fight."

The young Saiyan suddenly leapt forward, his knee slamming into Clone Akira's face, sending him hurtling through the air. His flight came to an immediate and painful stop when Akira appeared behind him, holding out his fist and letting the clone's own momentum do the damage.

Akira watched with a bemused expression on his face as his enemy struggled to stand. As soon as Clone Akira had made it to his hands and knees Akira kicked him in the face; the clone crashed through a distant boulder and collapsed amongst the rubble, his fur vanished and his hair shortened as he fell out of his transformation.

The Saiyan picked up the broken sword that the clone had dropped, calmly walked towards his enemy, and sat down on a rock, staring at the clone and thinking as he waited for him to regain consciousness.

ooo

King Kai and the Z Fighters were finally back on the Great Kai Planet and the humans and Saiyans had resumed their training while the Kai stared off into space, all of his attention was focused on Earth.

_'I'm sure that was Akira that I felt, but why would he be fighting and why did I feel two of him? There's no one left on Earth that could challenge him and no reason for him to use the Multiform technique,'_ King Kai thought. He wished Akira would either let his barrier drop so he could be sensed, or that whoever it was that was fighting him would give off some sort of aura so he could figure out what was happening on the troubled planet. For a moment he wondered if there could actually be two Akiras, but that simply brought up more questions and answered very little. Plus, it didn't make any sense.

With a sigh of hopelessness he returned his thoughts to the warriors he could feel. Pan, apparently somewhat rejuvenated by her time with her mother, was dancing around Krillin and Chiaotzu as the two humans tried without success to land a punch. King Kai smiled slightly at the sight, despite the troubling things happening on Earth, at least some people were beginning to move on with their lives...or afterlives, as the case may be.

ooo

The clone finally stirred, bringing Akira's mind back to the present; he'd been replaying his last several conversations with Pan in his mind. Regret flooded over him, he couldn't even remember the last time he'd told her he loved her, that she was everything to him. His eyes locked on the groaning clone, it was time to get his information.

"You're going to start telling me what I want to know," Akira growled threateningly.

"Not lik–" the clone didn't get a chance to finish as Akira shot forward and elbowed him in the face, slamming him into a large rock.

"Let me show you a little trick Vegeta taught me," the young man said with a wicked smile. He held out his hand with his middle and index finger extended and created five golden energy rings which pinned the clone to the rock at his wrists, ankles, and neck. "Now then, where did you come from?"

The clone was struggling to breath, as the ring around his neck tightened painfully, rubbing against the nasty bruises Akira made earlier. Clone Akira glared at the Saiyan, "You think you can threaten me into talking?" he gasped, "Kill me if you want, but it won't change anything."

Akira smiled, "Oh, I'm going to kill you. That was decided the moment you decided to hurt my friends, but the question is: how long is it going to take?" He held the clone's sword up in front of him and then slowly ran it along his enemy's chest.

The clone screamed in agony as his skin slowly split under the blade. The sword wasn't in very deep, the injury wouldn't kill, but the pain was excruciating.

When he was done, Akira watched silently as blood ran down the clone's chest; then he focused his ki around his finger and traced the cut, the smell of burnt flesh filling his nostrils and more screams rang pleasantly in his ears as he cauterized the wound.

"This is just a small taste of what I'll do to you. Believe me, I've thought of little else for the last few days, I have lots of ideas. So, where is he?" Akira asked, the look in his shining, metallic colored eyes letting the clone know that he wasn't bluffing.

"Your threats are meaningless," the clone spat, "I'm prepared to suffer for the good of the universe."

Akira arched an eyebrow, "For the good of the universe?"

"You Saiyans are a plague, a disease that spread throughout the galaxy and needs to be stomped out before you spread again. The souls of your victims, the thousands of species that are now extinct because of your people, cry out for your blood so they can rest in peace and they will only be satisfied when every last one of you have been destroyed."

Akira regarded his captive for a moment, "You've got it all wrong, the Saiyans that you killed haven't done anything like that...well, except for Vegeta a long time ago. The Saiyans only protect this planet."

"I'm sure the people of Planet Plant, Planet Meat, and Arlia would care."

Akira suddenly felt torn. _'He's a killer, but he thought that he was doing good, that he was making the universe safer by ridding it of the Saiyans...can I really kill him now that he's helpless? Wouldn't I just be doing what he thinks the Saiyans always do?'_

He swallowed hard and looked around, his mind filled with doubt. The burning rage he'd felt for the last few days was lessening. He still wanted to make someone pay for the deaths of his friends, but he wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do. At the same time, he couldn't just ignore the murders of the others...of Pan.

Pan.

_The smell of blood and burnt flesh filled his nostrils as he knelt next to the young woman's broken body._

_Akira thought about picking Pan up, but one look at the large hole in her stomach told him that moving her would do as much harm as good. If he tried to move her she would die, if he left her where she was she would die; there was nothing that he could do._

_He took her hand in his and squeezed it, "Please Pan. Please don't leave me," he whispered lowering his head to hers._

_Even as the words left his lips, he felt her life force fade away. Akira pulled her onto his lap, kissing her bloodied forehead and rocking back and forth as he cried._

Akira's eyes hardened. "You thought you were ridding the universe of the Saiyan's of old, but you were wrong. Those Saiyan's didn't exist anymore, they haven't for along time, but when you took my friends, when you took Pan, you brought them back."

His hand shot forward and grabbed the clone's right pinky finger, with a quick twist he broke it and ripped it off, spraying the rock face with blood.

"I'll ask again and after that I'll just start removing body parts every time you don't give me what I ask for. Where. Is. Your. Master?"

The clone's eyes were filled with pain and tears, but he clamped his mouth shut and refused to answer.

"Fine," Akira said as he ripped off another finger and then another until he ran out of fingers on Clone Akira's right hand; after that he moved onto the left.

The clone's screams filled the area, but Akira payed them no heed, he'd reached within himself, found as much darkness as possible and surrendered completely to it. He wasn't even bothering to ask questions anymore, every ounce of himself was being poured into causing as much pain to the thing that had stolen his life away.

Once all ten fingers had been removed and blood was flowing freely from the holes where the knuckle joints had been, Akira took the sword and pushed it into the clone's right wrist, wiggling it up and down and twisting it to maximize the pain and slowly separate the hand from the rest of the arm. Then he grabbed the hand and pulled, with a loud crack of breaking bone and then the softer, wet pop of ripping flesh and tendons, the hand came away.

The crazed Saiyan once again let his ki flow around his hand as he pressed it to the stump at the end of the clone's arm. Tiny wisps of smoke that smelled of burning flesh rose into the air as the clone's screams drowned out the sound of sizzling flesh. Akira repeated the process on the left hand.

"Are you ready to talk now?" he asked when he was finished.

Clone Akira's eyes were closed, his body sagging against the golden restraints that held him in place, the pain had driven him into unconsciousness.

Akira drove the sword into the clone's shoulder.

The clone awoke with another scream of pain.

"I'll say it again, cause you might have missed it. Are you ready to talk now?"

No answer.

"You're a fool," Akira said through bared teeth, with one swipe of the sword both of the clone's feet came off at the ankles.

ooo

"Are you alright King Kai?" Goten asked as he landed next to the martial arts master; Gohan and Trunks were right behind him eager to hear why the Kai had been staring off into space for over an hour.

"Um..." King Kai glanced at the three Saiyans, they weren't likely to let the subject drop the way Pan had. "I'm not sure," he finally answered truthfully, "I'm felt something strange on Earth."

"Is it Akira?" Trunks asked, his eyes burning with anger.

The Kai grimaced, he hadn't wanted to open old wounds, especially since these weren't that old to begin with. "Yeah, I think so...I can't feel him directly, but I can feel it when he uses ki blasts."

Gohan turned his eyes toward Pan, making sure she was out of earshot, he didn't want her to have to deal with this again. "So what's happening?" he asked when he saw that she was sparring with Vegeta, who was not going easy on her in the least.

"It's hard to say," Kink Kai said, "I think he's fighting something, but when all I can pick up is a random ki blast it's impossible to say one way or another." He looked up at the three warriors and frowned, "Sorry, unless he does something big, I have no real way of knowing what's going on."

Trunks took a deep breath and forced his anger away, "It's alright, there's nothing we can do about it now anyway."

ooo

Akira ran the sword along the clone's body once again and immediately cauterizing the wound with ki after letting it bleed for a moment. Clone Akira's body was now covered in dozens of such wounds, his skin seemed to just be one large scar and seemed to be slowly disintegrating under the torture Akira was dishing out; it was a masterpiece of agony that the young man had spent the last hour creating. Still, the clone refused to give up any information, but weakness was beginning to show in his eyes; Akira could tell that he was slowly but surely breaking his enemy.

"Why do you continue to hold to this idiotic course? Don't you understand that your suffering will end as soon as you tell me what I want to know?" Akira asked, looking into the clone's eyes. "Do you really want this to go on any longer? Because if it's really what you want, I could probably find you a rejuvenation tank, let you heal completely, and then we could do this all over again."

The clone whimpered a little, hanging between consciousness and oblivion.

"Did you hear what I asked you?"

The clone's eyes began to roll into the back of his head as he once again blacked out.

Akira squished the remains of the clone's nose together between his finger and thumb and twisted the lump of flesh hard, stretching and ripping the skin.

The clone's eyes snapped open as he cried out in pain.

Akira smiled sadistically and then tore the remains of the nose completely off.

When the new and noticeable weaker wave of screams died down Akira said, "Tell me where he is and I'll release you from your pain."

Clone Akira's eyes watered, but his jaw tightened as he turned his head and remained silent.

Akira grabbed the clone by the head and turned it so the two formerly identical warriors were staring into each other's eyes. The young man held one of his fingers up in between the them as golden ki blazed around it. He pointed the finger at one of the eyes of the clone and slowly pushed it into the eye. There was a sizzling noise and then a surprisingly loud pop as the eyeball burst from the heat surrounding the finger.

The clone's cries of pain echoed off the surrounding mountains.

ooo

"Master I cannot sit by any longer and allow this to happen!" a young man with blonde, spiky hair yelled as he raced towards the cave entrance. The large insectoid pointed the metal device at the young man and pressed a button, the blonde haired man fell to the ground as his hair became black.

"I'm sorry to resort to that, but we cannot give ourselves away yet. When the time is right we will repay the Saiyan for this and every other crime he and the other monkeys have committed, but we must do things correctly."

ooo

"Tell me!"

"N...never!"

Akira's fingers shot forward and simply plucked the clone's remaining eyeball from the socket. By this time, the clone had little energy left to scream, he simply lost consciousness and slumped forward once again.

Akira sighed, this was getting him no where, though he had to admit that he was enjoying himself. Not that long ago, he probably would have found both the idea of what he was doing as well as the pleasure that he was getting while doing it to be revolting. But this was not then, he was not that man anymore. The grief over the loss of his friends, the memory of the looks that Goten and Trunks had given him, and the guilt of knowing that he had failed everyone so completely tortured his soul, twisting him into something he barely recognized.

A killer.

Akira lifted the sword once again. It was time to end this, he no longer cared about whether or not the clone answered the questions, he would find the bastard's creator one way or another.

_'Well, perhaps I should ask one last time...it would save time after all.'_

The blade shot forward and sliced into the clone's cheek, waking him back up.

"This is the last time I ask, where is your creator?"

ooo

"You have done well my son," the insectoid whispered into the controller. "You may tell the monkey what you know, but do not tell him about the others. Enjoy your reward in the heavens, you will never be forgotten."

ooo

"I...I don...don't know..." the clone whispered hoarsely, blood and a jelly looking fluid running down his face from his empty eye sockets.

"I don't like that answer," Akira said, the blade of the sword tapped against Clone Akira's crotch. "Should we start removing more body parts?"

"I...I don't know where...he is," there was a desperation and fear in the clone's voice that brought a pleased smile to Akira's face even though he thought Clone Akira was probably lying. "We move around a lot, he's keeping his power level suppressed...."

"Who is he? Why did he do this?"

"H...He's The A...Arlean...the Saiyan Vegeta...destroyed his planet...killed everyone..."

Akira was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Did Pan know that you weren't me when you killed her...or did you let her die thinking that I didn't love her?"

The clone didn't answer, he didn't have to.

Akira drove the sword into his enemy's chest and pulled down, opening him up; he dropped the blade, pushed his hands into the wound and tore the clone open. Blood and gore sprayed everywhere, covering the rock, the ground and himself in sticky, red fluid. With a simple thought, the golden rings that had held the body to the boulder vanished and the remains of the clone collapsed into the pile of organs and removed body parts below it. Akira reached into the gore and, after a moment of searching, pulled the heart of Pan's killer out.

"I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE," the Saiyan yelled at the top of his lungs, "I DON'T CARE HOW LONG IT TAKES, I WILL FIND YOU! YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE!" He held the heart above his head, blood running out of it and dripping on his body, blending in with the blood that already covered him. His hand closed tightly around the bleeding organ, squeezing it into paste.

With that said and some of his rage abated, the last of the Saiyans dropped to his knees and screamed; he knew he was losing himself in his grief and pain, but there was no one around to mend his wounded soul. There never would be ever again. They were all gone and he was alone.

Akira didn't know how long he was there, kneeling next to the pile of bleeding flesh that had once been his clone, screaming and crying, but eventually his cries slowed and he stood. His face, which moments before had been filled with grief and sorrow, was eerily blank. The young Saiyan rose into the air and shot off into the distance, heading towards the ruins of his home.

o

o

A/N: I have a confession to make. I knew what was going to happen in the beginning of the story and what would happen in the end, but had no idea how to get from point A to point B. I think that's why I haven't liked the last few chapters (and don't much care for this one), because they were unplanned and just kind of a pain to write. Hopefully now that all that annoying middle stuff is out of the way, the story will be easier to write.

I hope I didn't disturb too many people with the whole torture thing...it wasn't fun to write or proof read, but I needed Akira to be, well, not good anymore. And I think that's about where he is...or at least close. Anyway, the next chapter should be out sometime next week. Leave me a review and let me know what you thought.

R-Krulle: With SSJ5, the red fur and hair become gold and the hair has a little bit of red at the tips; also the muscles aren't so big and bulky as they are in SSJ4. I'm glad you liked the fight.

Draco the Destroyer: Thanks for the hair info, I'm glad that Akira doesn't have to be bald for the rest of his life! I think I like Draco the Destroyer better than the Annihilator...'destroyer' just sounds cooler.

Everyone else: Thanks for your reviews and support, I went over 300 reviews after that last chapter! You guys rock.


	31. Hatching a Plan

**Chapter 31: Hatching a Plan**

Akira flinched when he saw the remains of the beautiful dome building he had lived in for the majority of the last three years; he'd hadn't been there since the day Vegeta and Bulma died, he wasn't sure why he was coming back now. When he'd first come to stay with Bulma and her family, he'd felt awkward, unsure of how to act and feeling like an intruder, but as time went on Capsule Corp became more than just a roof over his head or a place to train. It was his home, Trunks and Bra were siblings to him, Bulma a mother, and Vegeta (though Akira would never dare say it to the older Saiyan's face) a father. A gruff, impatient, demanding father, who routinely beat the tar out of him (and reminded him of it for the rest of the day) whenever they fought at equal power levels. Akira would have given anything to have Vegeta mocking him while Bulma scolded her husband for 'forcing' Akira to train when he was supposed to be doing homework, Trunks and Bra trying not to giggle at the antics of their parents.

The young Saiyan wiped a small tear from his eye, smearing more blood across his face in the process and landed softly on what was left of the roof. He sat down, set the clone's sword, which he had carried away from their battle, next to him and stared out at the city. Vegeta's battle had destroyed many of the buildings around Capsule Corp and the city still had not managed to clear away all of the destruction. It would probably take over a year before the toppled office buildings and warehouses were all removed and still longer for everything to be rebuilt.

After the death of the clone and during his flight towards his home, Akira's rage dissipated considerably, at least for the moment; now he just felt empty inside. Everything he had ever known or loved had been destroyed, nothing could fix it, he would be alone until the day that he died.

He wished that day would hurry up and arrive.

Yes, 'The Arlean' the clone had mentioned, the apparent architect of all the death that now filled Akira's life, was still out there, but would his death really change anything? Akira had thought that he would get a sense of peace when he killed his clone, but it had done nothing to fill the hole in his heart.

Still, he could not deny the small, twisted feeling of sick satisfaction at his actions before the clone's death, but that feeling only confused and disturbed him.

Part of him reveled in what he had done, feeling that it was completely justified. After all, he had been evil, no matter what it said, and evil deserved to be destroyed...as painfully and completely as possible. The clone had hurt him more than anything or anyone ever had and so he deserved what he got; he would have deserved it if Akira had tortured him for days, weeks, even years.

Another part of him, perhaps the smaller part of him at the moment, was shocked at the depths to which he had sunk. What he had done, what he had taken pleasure in, was barbaric. That part of him looked down at his gore covered body and shuddered. He had only killed one other person in his entire existence and that had been to defend his friends and the planet even at the cost of his own life. This was different, the clone was beaten, completely out matched and Akira had thoroughly enjoyed the pain he'd put his enemy through. He'd done it claiming that he wanted information, but really, he would have tortured the clone no matter what. There was no excuse for what he'd done. Pan would have been horrified.

But that was the problem, Pan was gone and most likely she would never return. None of them would. The dragonballs of Namek were powerless without Mouri and Earth's set were equally worthless.

Akira looked down at the sword, dark thoughts filling his mind.

ooo

Pan was taking a breather from her training, one could also say she was tired of Vegeta beating her up and wanted to watch him take apart Krillin and Yamcha for a while. Regardless, she was sitting in the grass watching her friends train and occasionally stealing glances at King Kai, who was still standing with his back to the group and his antenna twitching. She knew something was going on, and given that her father, uncle, and Trunks had spoken with the kai and then refused to give her any information about whatever it was that King Kai had said to them, she could pretty easily guess who it had to do with: Akira.

The thought of her former boyfriend twisted her head and her heart in knots. She wasn't sure if it was possible to both hate and love someone at the same time, but she was giving it her best shot. He had killed her entire family, all of her friends, and even herself and for that she would hate him for the rest of eternity, but it was impossible to just switch off emotions that had been running through her for over three years and deep down she still loved him or at least loved the memory of what he used to be.

After all, he had been her first love, her first kiss, her first real boyfriend, and she had thought he might also be the last in all of those categories (actually, now that she was dead, technically he _was_ the last). They had even talked of marriage, mostly in a hypothetical sense as Akira tended to get a little pale and scared looking at the mention of the 'M' word. Now she wouldn't get the chance to marry anyone, would never have children, would never do much of anything except train for no real reason other than to show the other kais that they didn't have any fighters that could hold a candle to the warriors from Earth.

Suddenly the afterlife felt very boring, she hoped that she would be able to find something else to do besides training everyday for the rest of eternity.

ooo

It was his fault, his fault, all of it was his fault.

Because he'd been too cowardly to go to his friends and tell them about his nightmares, about everything that he was going through and because he hadn't been strong enough to beat back the dreams, his friends were all dead. Their deaths were on his head, their blood stained his hands. It was his fault that Pan had died thinking he didn't love her, his fault that she was dead at all, his fault Vegeta and the rest of his friends were all dead, his fault that countless innocent people had been killed during his fight against Goten and Trunks.

And there was nothing he could do to fix it.

He squeezed his eyes shut against the thoughts, tears began rolling down his blood covered face, leaving behind tiny lines of cleaner skin as they fell. The guilt would not so easily be shut out of his mind.

Of course, there was one way to end it, to escape the misery. He picked up the sword and pressed the blade against his wrist, a thing rivulet of blood immediately began to trickle off his arm and splash onto the yellow dome.

He took a deep breath and readied himself.

A second passed.

And then another.

Akira threw the sword away, rage suddenly flowing through his veins again. He wasn't going to let things end this way, he wasn't going to just accept the fact that life wasn't fair and that he couldn't win. He was a Saiyan, one of the strongest fighters in the universe, he didn't have to play by the rules. Fate had given him lemons when the lives of those he held dear were stolen, but he wasn't going to make lemonade, he was going to throw the damn lemons in Fate's face and demand his friends back. He shouldn't have to accept things just because that's the way they were; he would force them to be the way he wanted them to be, the way they were _supposed_ to be. To hell with the consequences.

He had been a coward for a long time, but he would not be one today. Death was the easy way out, he didn't deserve that kind of mercy. His penance would be to suffer everyday for the rest of his life until he had killed the Arlean and found a way to bring back his friends. Nothing else would matter.

ooo

"So Pan, you think you can take your old man?" Gohan asked as he plopped down on the grass next to his daughter. She had a far off look in her eyes and it didn't take a genius scholar to guess what she was thinking of, or more accurately: _who_ she was thinking of. Pan had only just recently started to come out of her depression over the whole Akira situation and Gohan had no intention of letting her head back into it.

"Nah, I think I'd just like to sit and watch for a while," Pan replied without looking at him.

"You want to talk about him?"

"Him? What makes you think I'm thinking about him?" Gohan gave her a look that let her know he hadn't been fooled. "No, I don't want to talk about him," Pan suddenly wished her father would go away and leave her alone. She knew he was worried about her and she appreciated his concern, but she really just wanted to be alone with her thoughts and he didn't look like he was going to give her that.

"Are you sure? I know you and your mom talked about it a little, but I'm here for you too...and it might help."

"Actually, you know what I want to talk about? Tell me what's going on with King Kai, what's Akira doing now?"

Gohan mentally kicked himself, this was not going where he'd wanted it to, but he had no one to blame but himself for that. He was quiet for a moment and then said, "King Kai isn't really sure. He said he felt something strange on Earth, like Akira firing a ki blast, but he doesn't know why he would do something like that. I guess the images that he got when he sensed the blast were kind of weird, but he wouldn't say what was so strange about it."

Pan didn't say anything for a long time, she just stared off into space as she tried to picture Akira terrorizing a town for fun now that all of Earths protectors were out of the way. The picture in her mind just looked wrong some how; of course so did the last thing she remembered of her life, the image of Akira smiling as he fired a ki blast at her.

"Alright," she finally said, standing quickly and pushing her thoughts aside, "Let's go train, nothing better to do anyway."

Gohan smiled and followed her towards an open patch of grass, moments later they were lost in their battle.

ooo

Akira's plan on how to say 'screw you' to Fate formed surprisingly quickly once he'd figured out exactly what it was that he wanted. He usually wasn't the one to make plans or decisions, preferring to leave that up to one of the many dominating female figures in his life...or to Vegeta, if he was really desperate. In the end, there were two things that the universe would just have to change: his friends' deaths and the continued existence of the Arlean.

Given how big the planet was and how long it would take to search it, he decided that he would concentrate on the revival of the rest of the Z Fighters unless the Arlean made his presence known.

The problem was, of course, the lack of the dragon balls. With the Earth's set inactive for who knows how long and all of the Nameks dead, there was a real lacking in the 'mystical artifacts that could reshape the universe' department. However, after much thought, Akira realized that there were two possible solutions to his problem.

The first would be the easiest, he thought. He simply needed to find himself another Namek; certainly they wouldn't all have been on New Namek when it was purged. Piccolo had lived on Earth, perhaps another Namek had gone somewhere else. Finding the hypothetical Namek could pose a problem, but he still had (or hoped he still had) a friend in high places.

The second possible solution was a little more complex, but equally feasible in theory. He hoped his first option would come through, as it would make his life much simpler, but to be safe, he spent an hour rummaging through the ruins of Capsule Corp. When he finally found what he was looking for, he was pleasantly surprised, it didn't look nearly as damaged as he'd feared it would be. Then, with a slightly beat up looking computer in hand Akira headed to the nearest electronics store.

Employees and customers alike stopped what they were doing and stared at the bald Saiyan and his tattered clothes as he walked in and immediately began plugging a monitor into the computer and plugging the whole thing into an outlet.

"Excuse me sir, but what do you think you're doing?" a young man, wearing a name tag that identified him as a manager, asked as he approached Akira from behind.

The Saiyan ignored him and tried turning on the machine.

Nothing happened.

Akira let out a loud series of curses as the manager tried tapping him on the shoulder, "Sir, you can't just come in here and start using our equipment, I'm going to have to ask you to lea-"

In frustration and annoyance, Akira reached back, grabbed the annoying man by the throat and threw him across the room. With a snort of contempt he pulled the wires out of the computer and headed out of the shop. Just as he reached the doors, a security guard stepped in front of the young man, holding out his hand and ordering Akira to stop. The Saiyan calmly grabbed the man's arm, snapped it like a twig, and then left the store without another word.

He took to the air and headed to the only place he could think of that might be able to help him without asking to many questions. Trunks had a college buddy that claimed to be a computer genius; Akira wasn't sure about genius, but the guy had fixed his video game system after Vegeta 'accidentally' kicked it out a window. Trunks claimed the guy was the best and had often called upon his friend's services when he had trouble with his computer. Apparently Trunks' friend didn't even charge, he just liked the challenge of fixing the broken machines. The lavender haired Saiyan had also said that his friend didn't ask questions or snoop around in the information stored on the systems he fixed. It was for this reason that Akira sought him out.

ooo

It had been almost two years since Akira had seen Melvin, but fortunately the nerdish looking man with pale skin and thick glasses still lived in the same house. Actually, Akira didn't think the computer wiz had even left the house in all that time.

"Do I know you?" Melvin asked bluntly as he stared at the bald Saiyan in annoyance, apparently the blood and gore covering Akira from head to toe didn't disturb him too much.

"We met once, I'm Akira. I'm Trunks'..."

"Oh, right, right, Trunks' kid brother. Hey, how is he? I heard something big went down at Cap Corp a couple months ago. Never heard what happened though, I don't watch the news. Everyone okay?" The sentences were coming fast and furious.

Akira looked at the man in confusion, a large portion of the city was destroyed and this guy didn't even know. "Uh, yeah, sure," the Saiyan lied, not really wanting to discuss exactly what had happened.

"Great to hear, now what do you want? I'm a bit busy."

Akira handed over the computer, "I need information off of this."

Melvin ran his eyes over the beat up case and then glanced at Akira, "What happened to this thing? Trunks' dad trying to play a game on it again or something?"

The thought of Vegeta playing video games almost brought a smile to the young Saiyan's face. "Something like that. Can you fix it?"

"Depends on what the inside looks like, but probably."

"How long?"

"At least a week, maybe two. I've got some other projects I need to finish first."

Akira frowned, "That's too long, I need you to fix this first."

"No can do my man. You might be Trunks' brother, but he's the only one that gets special treatment. For everyone else it's first come, first serve."

The Saiyan thought for a second and then said, "I can pay you whatever you want. I need that computer fixed as soon as possible."

Melvin laughed, "I just fix computers for fun. I don't need money, I've got plenty of that already...and before you offer more, you don't have anything that I want. Sorry, bro, but you'll just have to wait." He set the computer down inside the house and started to close the door in Akira's face.

The Saiyan's hand shot out, shattering the door and knocking the computer genius to the floor. Akira stepped inside, grabbed Melvin by the neck and lifted him into the air.

"I think I have something that you want now," he said with an evil grin. "Now, I want that computer fixed by the end of the day. If it's not, well, let's just say things will get a little messy around here."

Melvin nodded, his wide, fear-filled eyes magnified by his large glasses. Akira dropped him unceremoniously on his butt and started to walk out of the house, at the door way he stopped and glanced over his shoulder, "Don't even think about trying to run either, I'm very good at finding people."

His back up plan somewhat in place, he readied himself for what was sure to be an unpleasant conversation. Akira took a deep breath, brought two fingers to his forehead, and vanished.

ooo

King Kai had given up trying to sense anything more from Earth, it had been several hours and the little planet was completely silent in terms of battle auras; whatever it was that Akira had been doing was apparently finished. The kai looked over at where the Z Fighters were all still sparing, though some seemed to be slowing down a bit; they would all make excellent students. With the exception of Chiaozu, every one of the warriors from Earth were already stronger than him, with his training and techniques they would easily be the some of the elite fighters of Other World. In time, Vegeta and possibly the other Saiyan's would probably even match the power that Akira held, though it would be too little, too late.

Thoughts of the young man caused the kai's heart to break. He had taught the Akira, helped him to become one of the strongest fighters ever, but in the end he had turned on his friends and killed them all. In some ways, King Kai felt a sense of guilt over their deaths. Without his training, Akira might not have reached the newest pinnacle of Saiyan power, and all of the people training in the grass might still be alive.

A shadow fell over the kai, causing him to turn and look up. He gasped as a hand closed over his mouth.

"Don't talk, just listen," Akira whispered.

ooo

Pan powered down and smiled at her father. "I think that's enough for me dad; too much school lately and not enough training, I guess. I told you I should have just worked in grandpa's dojo and not bothered with college."

Gohan chuckled, "If you had done that, we both would have ended up here a lot quicker, compliments of your mother. I'm going to go watch your uncle and Trunks, it feels like they're trying to take on Vegeta, it should be funny, you want to come?"

"Nah, I'm just going to rest for a bit, maybe take a walk and see the sights."

"Alright, I'll catch up with you later then," Gohan said with a smile as he walked towards the others."

Pan watched him go for a moment and then started looking for King Kai, she wanted to know what the others were keeping from her. It took just a moment to spot him in the distance, talking to a bald man, with a strange dark red tint to his body and clothes. As she walked towards them, the bald man suddenly grabbed the kai by his robe and lifted him into the air, shaking him as he yelled something she couldn't make out.

In an instant Pan had transformed and was racing towards the two. The bald man dropped kai and started to turn towards her just as her foot slammed into the side of his head. King Kai's assailant was sent flying through the air before crashing into the ground with a shower of dirt and grass.

"Are you alright King Kai?" the young woman asked, keeping her eyes on the prone form of the attacker.

"Yes, bu–"

"Good, wait here," she started running to where the bald man was just picking himself off the ground.

"No! Wait, you don't understand!" King Kai called out, but Pan was too focused on the task before her to hear his words.

The young woman came to a stop a few feet from the man just as he stood, his back facing her.

"Alright, who are you? Why were you attacking King Kai?" she demanded.

The man said nothing, his body seemed to tremble slightly at the sound of her voice.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!" Pan yelled, "Are you dea..." her voice trailed off as she noticed his lack of a halo and the brown tail wrapped protectively around his waist. "No..."

Akira turned his blood stained face and looked at her, his eyes filling with tears. "Hello my love."

o

o

A/N: Well, there you have it. Not much really to say about this chapter, other than I hated the part with the computer nerd. I tried writing it a couple of different ways and never could make it sound right. I would have cut it completely, but I felt like I needed to have Akira showing more signs of questionable behavior outside of the realm of fighting bad guys and this was the best way I could think of to have it. Oh well, it was just one scene and now it's basically behind us. Anyway, as per many a request, we are finally going to get to the part where everyone knows that Akira didn't actually kill them...though I don't think it will be the happy occasion that you all are probably hoping for. Thanks for reading and for all of the wonderful reviews of the last chapter.

Courtney: If you didn't know (and your review sounded like you might not have), Planet Plant was the original name of the Planet Vegeta (before the Saiyan's conquered it) and Planet Meat was the planet that Bardock was given his visions.

Toni the Mink: Yeah, the eyeball thing was tough to write as I am a bit eyeball squeamish also (it's a good thing I have good vision, if I didn't I'd be stuck with glasses. No putting contacts in for me shudders).

The Tiny: Don't worry, there's a good and perhaps even slightly logical reason for the Arlean's survival.

Nadz: Yeah, after going back and reading it, I have to agree with you that Akira did flip flop a bit quick. Maybe I'll go back and correct it after I've finished writing the rest of the story.

Everyone Else: Thanks again for all your wonderful reviews. 316! I can hardly believe it.


	32. The Truth

**Chapter 32: The Truth**

o

A/N: As can't decide what characters the QuickEdit is going to accept and which it won't, for the purposes of this chapter, any telepathy with have a / on either side of it, like so: /I'm a telepathis though./ Will this beusable next time? No one knows, but I'll do my best to let you know if I need to change it...again.

o

"Don't talk, just listen," Akira whispered into King Kai's ear as his hand clamped over the kai's mouth. For a moment King Kai looked like he might still try to alert the others, something Akira was hoping desperately to avoid, but finally the kai gave a small nod and relaxed. The young Saiyan tentatively removed his hand and, much to his relief, King Kai did not yell for help.

"I need to know if there are any Nameks left...anywhere," Akira said quietly.

"What?!?" the kai yelled in shock, causing the Saiyan to cringe. "Do you really think I'm going to help you kill more people than you already have?"

Akira's blood was at the boiling point in an instant, he grabbed King Kai by his robes and lifted him into the air. "I didn't kill anyone!" he yelled as he shook the panicking kai, forgetting his plan of keeping quiet to avoid his friends. "It wasn't me, it wa–"

His voice cut off as he felt a large ki flare up as it charged towards him. He recognized that particular life force instantly, his mind went blank, his muscles felt weak. Akira dropped King Kai a half second before the kick landed and he was sent flying.

It took a moment for Akira to regain his bearings after he crashed face first into the dirt. He didn't want to get up, he didn't want to see her, but in both cases he knew he had no choice. Slowly he climbed to his feet as he felt her approach. If she attacked again, he wouldn't defend himself, he would never lift a hand against her in a real fight.

"Alright, who are you? Why were you attacking King Kai?" Pan's voice called out to him from just a few feet away.

Akira barely registered her words. Her voice, Kami, somehow in less than a week he'd nearly forgotten how beautiful it was. He tried to find something to say, but his mouth didn't work anymore. He could feel his muscles begin to tremble and tears filled his eyes, at that moment he would have gladly given up on his plans, killed himself, and come here to stay with her forever.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!" Pan yelled, "Are you dea..." her voice trailed off, Akira knew that probably wasn't a good sign. "No..." Definitely not a good sign.

The young man forced himself to turn and look at her, his breath catching in his chest at the sight of her beauty. They stared at each other for a second and then he said in a voice barely above a whisper, "Hello my love."

Pan's face filled with confusion and fear as she took a hesitant step back. "No..." she said again. Her eyes traveled over his blood covered form. He was here, on the Great Kai Planet. It didn't make sense, why would he be here, wasn't killing them once enough for him? Did he really need to completely wipe them from existence?

He reached out and caught her hand in his, her skin tingled at his touch, but she pulled away from him. She would not let herself feel this way. He was a killer, her killer; whatever had been between them was obviously just another of his lies. Her jaw muscle flexed as she willed her heart to obey. Even as it grudgingly complied, she couldn't bring herself to look into his eyes..

"Pan, please...let me explain," Akira pleaded.

"Explain? There's nothing to explain!" the hatred in her voice that seemed to intensify with each word caught him off guard. For a moment he'd let himself forget just how badly she had been hurt by his apparent betrayal. "You killed your whole family, you killed all of our friends, you killed my mom and dad...you even killed Kumo...You, you loved him...h,he used to do a little dance whenever he heard we were going to babysit..." tears of grief and anger filled her eyes, though she still wouldn't or couldn't look directly at him. "You even killed me...I was nothing to you, was I? Just something to play with until you were ready to murder us all."

"No, ple–"

She wasn't listening to him anymore. "You seemed so good, how could you not be with Grandpa's soul? But you're not...you're not like Grandpa, you're just some sort of a twisted, sick freak."

"Pan, I didn't...I wouldn't...I lov–"

"NO!" she screamed, "Don't you dare say that to me! Not now, not ever. You don't know what love is, to you it's just another tool to manipulate with, just like I was," her eyes locked onto his. "I hate you," she whispered harshly and, though she had said it and thought it before, this time she really meant it.

Akira's eyes widened for a moment as they flooded with pain; for the briefest of moments Pan almost felt bad for her words, but she quickly dismissed the feeling. He deserved any pain she could give him. Her hand clenched into a fist and was surrounded with golden energy, she reached back and swung as hard as she could at his face, knowing that he could dodge it, but wanting to show him that she meant what she said.

Akira closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side, Pan's fist missed him by the tiniest fraction of an inch, but the ki surrounding her hand sliced deeply into his cheek like a knife. Blood began running down the side of his face.

Pan looked at him in confusion. Akira could have avoided her attack easily, but he didn't and he wasn't retaliating. A seed of doubt crept back into her heart, she tried desperately to stamp it out, not wanting to feel the emotions it tried to sow within her, but it had already taken root.

Akira opened his eyes and looked at her, all of the pain and emotion that had been on his face moments ago was locked away now. She'd never seen him look the way he did now, not even when he'd killed her. When he'd attacked her at the coffee shop, his eyes had been lit with sick pleasure. When he'd fought Ammit his eyes were filled with a grim determination. During all the happy times they'd spent together his eyes had always been alive with joy. Now, his eyes were empty, dead. He was barely a shell of the man he'd once been.

"You're right to hate me, it's because of me that you and everyone you love is dead," he said in a tired voice, "but when you know the truth, I think you'll regret your words."

Pan felt anger well up inside of her once again as her roller coaster of emotions continued. She opened her mouth to tell him off, but a hand clamped over it, silencing her for the moment.

"No, there's nothing more for you to say," Akira whispered, a hint of anger and almost despair creeping into his voice. "But know this: I do love you and I will make things right no matter what the cost." He kissed her gently on the forehead and then vanished before she even had the chance to recoil in disgust.

Pan whirled around just in time to see Akira reappear next to King Kai, grab him by the shoulder, and then vanish once again, taking the kai with him.

ooo

King Kai gave a small yelp as he and Akira appeared on top of a large desk. It took the kai a moment to realize that he was standing in front of King Yemma.

"Akira, King Kai, well, this is a surprise," the large demon said with a pleasant smile. "It's not often that I see the same basic person twice in such a short amount of time, especially after sending one of them to HFIL."

King Kai looked up at him, "What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"The second Akira, of course. I gave him his sentence only two hours ago."

King Kai's brow furrowed, "Why didn't you tell me there was a second Akira?"

Yemma gave the kai a bewildered look. "I didn't know you wanted me to," he replied simply. "Clone's aren't common, but they aren't unheard of in the universe, I didn't realize this one was a special case."

"He wiped out the remainder of the Saiyan race! That didn't seem special to you?"

"There's a Saiyan standing next to you, the clone didn't commit genocide," King Yemma shot back.

The kai glanced at Akira, he'd almost forgotten the young man was still standing there. "Well...this other Akira did kill almost all of the Saiyans, plus all of the Nameks, and you didn't think that I would like to know that he was here? You know how crucial those two species have been in keeping the galaxy safe."

Yemma rummaged through a drawer in his desk for a moment, pulled out a folder, and began leafing through it. "Ah, here we are. Crimes. 'Clone known as 03 has murdered the Saiyans Vegeta, Trunks, Bra, Gohan, Pan, Goten, and Kumo; the humans Chiaozu, Yamcha, Tienshinhan, Roshi, Bulma, Chi-chi,...'" Yemma's desk began to shake as Akira's anger started to get the better of him, wisps of golden energy were flickering into existence as his power level rose. "Er, I guess I don't really need to read the whole list, but I can tell you that this '03' never killed a Namek. Nor, for that matter, has the Akira standing next to you."

King Kai stared straight ahead for a moment, his mind reeling from the sudden revelation. Finally he turned to Akira and said, "We need to talk."

The young man nodded and the two hopped off the enormous desk and walked towards Snake Way.

ooo

Goten and Trunks stopped mid swing when they heard Pan yelling for them; Vegeta ignored the call and landed two vicious kicks to the younger Saiyans, sending them crashing to the ground. With his opponents 'defeated,' the Saiyan Prince powered down and landed next to the growing crowd of humans and Saiyans gathering around the young woman.

"Ugh, what's up Pan," Trunks asked as he climbed to his feet, rubbing his chin where Vegeta's kick had hit him.

"It's Akira...he's here," all eyes were glued to her now, "He, he took King Kai...they just vanished."

Gohan closed his eyes, a look of intense concentration filled his face. "He's still alive," the former scholar whispered, "he's with..."

"Yemma," Vegeta finished for him.

Uubu looked at the two Saiyan men in confusion, "Why would Akira take King Kai to King Yemma?"

No one could think of an answer.

"So, do we go after them?" Krillin asked.

"There's no point," Goten pointed out, "If Akira wants to kill King Kai, he'd be dead long before we got there. Yemma's Palace is along ways away, we'd have to take one of those planes just to get there."

"So you think we should just sit here and twiddle our thumbs?" Pan asked her uncle angrily.

"He's right, there's nothing we can do," Vegeta replied, grinding his teeth in frustration. The boy had been on the planet, but had escaped before the Saiyan Prince could attempt to get his revenge.

"You're thinking about this wrong," Piccolo said from his meditative stance a short distance away. The Namek's eyes were closed, his legs crossed, and he was hovering just above the ground. The Z Fighters turned and stared at him.

"Explain yourself, Namek!" Vegeta barked when Piccolo did not elaborate.

"You're all still assuming that he's guilty," the Namek warrior did not open his eyes or move any part of his body other than his mouth.

"He _IS _guilty," Eighteen pointed out.

Piccolo's eyes snapped open, he glared at them, "Then why come here? Why take King Kai?"

"Maybe it wasn't enough to kill all of his living friends, so he's moving on to the dead ones," Trunks said with a scowl.

"If he wanted to kill us, Pan and King Kai would already be dead."

"But..." Yamcha's rebuttal died on his lips as Piccolo's words sunk in.

"What does it mean, Tien?" Chiaozu whispered to his long time friend.

Tien shook his head, "I don't know Chiaozu..."

ooo

"Okay, so what's going on?" King Kai asked as soon as he and Akira were outside of King Yemma's enormous palace. "You really didn't kill them?"

Akira glanced at his teacher and closed his eyes. "I might as well have," he whispered.

"But you didn't..."

"I didn't tell them...I didn't warn any of them that it might be me. I was afraid."

King Kai looked at the broken young man, it was hard to get his mind around the idea that this humbled, bald, blood covered Saiyan was the same person as the happy, confident, young man he had trained a few years ago. The two barely even looked alike. "Akira," he said, placing his hand on the young man's arm, "You didn't kill them, it wasn't your fault."

"Don't tell me that!" the Saiyan screamed, "I was a coward, I let my fear control me and now they're all dead! When they saw him, they didn't know he wasn't me, they didn't know they were in danger, and it was all because I ran away and hid!"

The kai was speechless; nothing he could say would give the young man any peace, Akira had already been condemned in his own eyes.

The Saiyan was quiet for a moment, tiny trails of tears running down the sides of his face, burning the open wound on his cheek where Pan had hit him. He welcomed the pain, though he knew he deserved far worse. Finally he regained control of his emotions, he'd cried far too much today was it was. Tears would not solve anything.

"Are there any Nameks left, someone like Piccolo who had left the planet before it was purged?" he asked, his eerily devoid of feeling.

"I don't think so," King Kai replied honestly. "Even if there were, it would be nearly impossible for me to find one unless they were fairly powerful or I knew who I was searching for."

Akira nodded, his face hiding how he felt about the news. "In that case I just need you to point me towards Earth. It's hard to feel it from here, especially without..." his voice trailed off. "Just help me find it."

"You won't come back with me?" King Kai asked, "They need to know the truth, they need to know that you didn't really do it."

"Tell them if you want," the Saiyan said, "but my time here is done, I have other things to do."

King Kai shuddered at the coldness in Akira's voice, but nodded and placed his hand on Akira's shoulder, mentally guiding him back to Earth and helping the Saiyan lock onto the life force signatures there. He could feel Akira prepare to use the Instant Transmission.

/Wait./ the kai whispered into the young man's mind, /I need to see what happened./

Akira's eyes widened, /No! I can't./

/Please Akira, the others need to know. Pan needs to know. If you won't go back with me to talk to them, then I need you to show me what's happened to you./

Akira's body shook slightly, but he mentally nodded to the kai.

King Kai pushed his way into the Saiyan's mind; despite his agreement, Akira was not making it easy for the kai to read him, doing everything in his power to push the mental probe away. However, Akira's telepathic powers were nothing compared to those of King Kai and in a matter of seconds, the young man's mind began to give up its memories.

_Even as her breathing became slow and rhythmic and her hand slipped from his tail, the young man could feel sleep reaching out to claim him as well. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but each time he blinked his eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Finally the lack of sleep from the previous nights caught up with him, he rested his head against Pan's and drifted off to sleep._

_The nightmares came as soon as he closed his eyes. The intoxicating scent of blood filled his nostrils as he slaughtered all who stood before him. Most of the crowd was faceless and he killed them almost haphazardly; others, such as Vegeta, Gohan, and Pan, he recognized and they were the ones with whom he took his time. Their blood covered him and soaked into the ground as he slowly tore them limb from limb, reveling in their anguished screams._

"_AKIRA!"_

_The young man opened his eyes to find Pan smacking his arm with one hand while looking down and trying to pry his tail from around her waist with the other hand._

_Akira grinned manically and tightened his grip on her, trying to squeeze the life from her. Suddenly realization of what he was doing struck him. His tail released her and he began apologizing profusely._

King Kai pushed past the memory, and continued on.

_"Uh, hello? Is there someone there?" he asked, cautiously approaching the grass. There was no answer, so he bent down and peered into the tall weeds. Suddenly a fist shot out and slammed into the side of his head._

_Akira was sent crashing into a nearby hut. Fortunately, the blow wasn't strong enough to actually do any damage to him and the young Saiyan was quickly on his feet. He watched in confusion as a battered and bloody Namekian warrior rose out of the grass and raised his power level slightly._

_"Murderer!" the Namek snarled, "why have you returned?"_

_"What are you talking about?" Akira asked in confusion._

_"You kill all of my people and leave me for dead and you ask what I'm talking about?"_

_Akira's eyes narrowed, "I haven't killed anyone," he said firmly. "I'm only here for the dragonba—"_

_"Lies!" the Namek screamed. "The dragonballs are gone; you made sure of that when you slew Elder Mouri!" The warrior's power began to grow larger, but Akira could tell that the stress was quickly becoming too great for the Namek's badly injured body to maintain._

The kai could feel Akira flinch under the memories, these were things that the young man had tried to bury and forget.

_Akira was beginning to rise into the air when Pan's hand latched on to his ankle and pulled him back down. He crossed his arms and gave her his best Vegeta-glare as his feet hit the ground._

_The young woman refused to back down though. "Why are you leaving? Why won't you stay with us?" she asked._

_Akira's eyes remained cold. "I have other things that I need to do."_

_Pan stared at him in silence for a long time; she couldn't understand what it was that he was going through or why he wouldn't let her help him. Finally she asked, "Did I do something to you? Is that why you've been acting like this the last couple of days?"_

_"You didn't do anything, there's just...things are , for me right now."_

_"What? What's going on? Why won't you tell me?" she demanded._

_Akira's face softened slightly as he bowed his head and closed his eyes; he took a deep breath and opened his mouth to tell her everything, but the words refused to pass his lips._

King Kai could feel Akira resisting against this memory, he almost let it pass, but something called him to check closer.

_Akira pulled her close and pressed his lips to hers in a tender kiss that he hoped told her just how true his love was. At first she was stiff in his arms and then she slowly melted and kissed him back. A minute later he pulled away and gave her a lopsided smile, all of the exhaustion and pain that had been in his eyes for the last few days seemed to fall away as he whispered, "Never doubt my feelings for you. No matter what happens, know that I love you. And know that I am only trying to do what needs to be done to keep everyone safe."_

It was their last kiss, King Kai realized, he could feel the young man's pain over the memory and so he let it pass.

_Akira appeared in the darkened building and looked around in confusion. It took him a moment to spot Pan's broken, bleeding body, but when he did he was instantly at her side._

_"Pan?" he asked, kneeling next to her and gently touching her bruised face. Her eyes remained closed in unconsciousness, he could feel her quickly slipping away. "Oh Kami! Pan, wake up honey...please, you have to hang on." He looked around frantically, trying to think of what he could do. He wasn't sure where he was in the city (or even what city he was in), so it didn't seem likely that he'd find a hospital in time, but if he didn't do something Pan would be dead in moments._

_He thought about picking her up, but one look at the large hole in her stomach told him that moving her would do as much harm as good. If he tried to move her she would die, if he left her where she was she would die; there was nothing that he could do._

_He took her hand in his and squeezed it, "Please Pan. Please don't leave me," he whispered lowering his head to hers._

_Even as the words left his lips, he felt her life force fade away. Akira pulled her onto his lap, kissing her bloodied forehead and rocking back and forth as he cried._

Akira was noticeable shaking and inside his mind he raged against the kai's intrusion, but there was little he could do. King Kai knew that he needed to see this information. He needed to know exactly what had happened, not just so Akira's friends could find some sort of peace or know who their real killer was, the kai needed to know what Earth was facing now that all but one of its protectors had been killed.

"_You don't feel the bump?" The clone took Akira's look of surprise as a 'yes.' "That bump is the top of a small robot that nestles into your skin; it probably felt like a mosquito bite when it happened, if you even noticed it at all. The robot allows my creator to influence you. It was originally used to control slaves, but a Saiyan mind is surprisingly strong. While you were rested and awake, you had enough will power to resist the impulses; however, when you were asleep, your mind was open and defenseless." The clone smiled at Akira's confusion, "Originally you were supposed to be the killer. Unfortunately after several failed attempts, my master realized that you wouldn't give in for a long time, if ever, and he grew impatient. Thus, the honor of extinguishing the Saiyans was not yours."_

"_But...but why?" Akira asked, "Why me? Why the Saiyans? What did we ever do to this 'master' of yours?"_

_The other Akira looked down at the injured fighter with a scowl. "Enough talk, it's time to end this once and for all." The clone reached back and pulled a red handled sword out of its sheath, identical to the one that had been driven through Vegeta's chest._

_Akira forced himself to his feet. "I'm going to kill you," he promised, "You took my entire life away from me, my friends, my family...Pan. I will crush you." He started to power up, his hair becoming spiky and golden, but then his hair fell and remained black._

"_Well," the clone said with a raised eyebrow, "that was entertaining. Now, let me show you how it's done." His hair stood on end and turned golden, his eyes becoming aqua._

_Akira backed away in fear; he couldn't feel the other fighter's power level, the clone had his barrier as well as his appearance._

"_Don't worry, this will be quick," the clone promised._

_Suddenly he was behind Akira; a quick jab sent the young man flying forward, right into an elbow that drove all the air from his lungs. With a powerful kick, the clone sent Akira into the air and then another punch sent the injured Saiyan crashing face first into the ground. The clone landed next to Akira, grabbed the young man's hair and lifted his head enough to confirm that Akira was already unconscious._

"_Pathetic," the clone sneered. "I actually thought you might provide some sort of challenge, but after your fight with the fused one, you're nothing." He threw Akira into the side of a ruined building; the young man cried out as he hit the cement, the sudden burst of pain awakening him from his slumber; he crumpled to the ground. As the clone, idly twirling the sword in his hand, calmly walked towards him, Akira began pulling the last of his energy into his palm._

_The other fighter stood over the young man and raised the sword, "Good bye Akira, say 'hi' to Pan for me."_

_Akira threw his hands up and fired the blast point blank into the clones face._

_The explosion from the blast sent Akira flying, but he managed to do a small flip in the air and almost land on his feet before collapsing. He weakly lifted his head and watched as the smoke from the blast cleared; there hadn't been much in the attack, but he hoped the close range had made up for that._

_As the last wisps of smoke lifted, the clone was standing exactly where he had been. Smiling._

"_Well, that was almost surprising," the other Akira said with a chuckle. "Maybe if you were a little stronger you would have singed my hair. You should thank me for destroying Pan before she found out how weak you really are. I hear Saiyan females will only mate with the strongest male they can find."_

_Akira painfully climbed to his feet again, thoughts of Pan running through his mind. His whole body shook with rage, but couldn't raise his power level enough to make a difference; he simply didn't have anymore to give._

_The clone walked towards Akira once more, this time Akira didn't have the strength or time to create another ki beam. The clone flipped the sword around in his hand and slammed the base of the handle into Akira's chin, lifting the injured Saiyan off the ground. With one quick move, the clone spun and drove the sword into Akira's unprotected stomach._

_The Saiyan fell to the ground and screamed in pain, his one good hand pressed tightly against his bleeding stomach. He could feel his intestines slide against his palm as they tried to escape through the hole._

"_Hurts, doesn't it?" the clone asked with a sadistic grin. "But does it hurt as bad as this?" He lifted his foot and then brought it down hard on one of Akira's legs, breaking it with a sickening crunch as the young man once again screamed in agony._

_It was all Akira could do just to remain conscious in the face of all the pain that was shooting through his body._

_The clone squatted down and watched with satisfaction as the young man became weaker and weaker, he could practically see the sense of hopelessness settling over his twin._

'_I'm going to die,' Akira realized, 'I won't be able to resurrect the others...and I'll have failed Pan again.'_ _He shook his head, he couldn't let that happen, one way or another he had to survive._

King Kai watched the memories of Akira waking up in the rejuvenation tank, of him remembering his past and then of him finding the clone. Their battle had been fierce, and it explained much of what the kai had seen during the brief moments when he could sense the two fighting. And then he watched in horror as Akira unleashed the full force of his pain and anger upon the clone.

_"Who is he? Why did he do this?"_

_"H...He's The A...Arlean...the Saiyan Vegeta...destroyed his planet...killed everyone..."_

_Akira was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Did Pan know that you weren't me when you killed her...or did you let her die thinking that I didn't love her?"_

_The clone didn't answer, he didn't have to._

_Akira drove the sword into his enemy's chest and pulled down, opening him up; he dropped the blade, pushed his hands into the wound and tore the clone open. Blood and gore sprayed everywhere, covering the rock, the ground and himself in sticky, red fluid. With a simple thought, the golden rings that had held the body to the boulder vanished and the remains of the clone collapsed into the pile of organs and removed body parts below it. Akira reached into the gore and, after a moment of searching, pulled the heart of Pan's killer out._

_"I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE," the Saiyan yelled at the top of his lungs, "I DON'T CARE HOW LONG IT TAKES, I WILL FIND YOU! YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE!" He held the heart above his head, blood running out of it and dripping on his body, blending in with the blood that already covered him. His hand closed tightly around the bleeding organ, squeezing it into paste._

_With that said and some of his rage abated, the last of the Saiyans dropped to his knees and screamed; he knew he was losing himself in his grief and pain, but there was no one around to mend his wounded soul. There never would be ever again. They were all gone and he was alone._

_Akira didn't know how long he was there, kneeling next to the pile of bleeding flesh that had once been his clone, screaming and crying, but eventually his cries slowed and he stood. His face, which moments before had been filled with grief and sorrow, was eerily blank._

King Kai released Akira, leaned over the side of Snake Way, and threw up, something he hadn't done since he'd witnessed the destruction the Buu monster had unleashed upon the universe. He'd seen images not unlike what had been in Akira's memories before, but to experience them intimately through the eyes of the one doing it was more than he'd been prepared for.

"Akira..." he whispered.

"I don't want to hear it," the young man replied coldly as he fought to catch his breath, "he got what he deserved...better than he deserved."

"Perhaps, but...what you did...you can't do something like that without consequence. It changes you, it's already changing you." The kai could recognize it in his eyes now, some of the kindness and joy that had made Akira who he was had vanished, possibly lost forever.

"It doesn't matter anymore...I live for just one thing, I'm going to make things the way they should be. Nothing else matters."

And there it was, Akira had just given voice to the one thing that King Kai had feared as he watched the Saiyan's memories. Akira had given up on life, he had nothing to live for other than his revenge, and he would go to any lengths and through anyone to accomplish it. If an innocent got in his way, he would kill them in an instant; if wiping out a planet would accomplish his goal, he wouldn't hesitate.

Akira started to bring his fingers to his forehead once again, but King Kai's hand quickly grabbed his arm. "Akira please, you must turn away from this path...it will only lead to more suffering, for you and for many others."

With a quick jerk of his arm, the Saiyan knocked the kai to the ground. The two stared at each other for a moment and then a shadow of the old Akira seemed to appear on the young man's face.

"I'm sorry King Kai. I didn't want it to be this way, but...this is just how it is now. Tell the others...tell Pan...I'm sorry..." his voice trailed off and he brought his fingers to his head. He vanished without another word.

King Kai sat staring at the spot where the young man had been, his mind trying to think of anything else he could have said to convince Akira to find another way.

He couldn't think of anything.

After a few minutes he rose, concentrated on the group of life forces that were clustered together, no doubt debating how to save him, and vanished.

ooo

Akira appeared above a crowded amusement park. He hovered in the air for a moment, getting his bearings and then flew towards Melvin's house. Plan A was a bust, he'd have to go with Plan B.

Thenerd's time was up.

o

o

A/N: How's this for a quick update? I got online today and saw that I had received 11 reviews, so I thought I should sit down and write for a little while. Three hours later, this is what I had. I must say that I liked it much more than my last few chapters (with the exception of King Yemma's scene, that part was kind of dumb). I've had the whole Akira-Pan conversation rolling around in my head since...well, since I decided to kill her I guess. All of the versions were basically the same in that they all involved her telling him she hated him and then hitting him, I think the version in this chapter was probably my best effort. It's still emotional, which usually means I'd hate it, but for some reason I just liked the way the scene came together. I do want to apologize for the 'artificial' length of this chapter, it's really not very creative for me to just keep using flashbacks, but I wanted King Kai to know everything and this was the best way I could come up with for him to see exactly what's been going on. Thanks for all the wonderful reviews, be sure to write another and let me know what you thought of this chapter.

Ladybugg: Wow, you're all the way back at chapter 17, huh? Boy have things changed since then. I hope you liked all the chapters you downloaded.

Francis Keenan: I kind of side stepped the whole 'Akira confronts everyone issue,' I just didn't think I could handle writing all the dialog and chaotic violence that would have been involved in such a scene (I still shudder when I remember what a pain it was to write the 1 on 50 battle scenes in the Ammit Saga). As for clone number 2 wanting to destroy the universe because he's pissed about it forgiving the Saiyans...well, I can tell you that probably won't happen, but your review gave me an idea for a possible scene involving the deceased clone. I still haven't decided if it would work or not.

Draco the Destroyer: I can't deny that I dig the old Godzilla movies too (didn't like the CG one and never saw G2000), there's something about funny old monster flicks that can be so entertaining. I still haven't decided about Goku making a small return or not (in a vision or something). Unlike the Ammit Saga, there hasn't been much mapping out for this story; I know kind of what's going to happen and the chapters just sort of come to me (usually I'm as surprised as anyone whenever something startling or revealing happens).

Courtney: No worries, I've only seen the English versions also. I'm not sure where I read the different planet names, but for some reason those two stuck with me.

Toni the Mink: I've only seen a little of Sailor Moon, for some reason it was really appealing to watch when I was supposed to go to my Russian class, which I ended up flunking (what a surprise, watching anime doesn't help you learn Russian, who would have guessed?). Once I was no longer taking that class, the show just wasn't as exciting for me anymore. I don't remember anyone named Melvin, but it sounds familiar (was he a friend of the blue sailor scout? Mercury, maybe?). Mostly it was the first name that popped into my head when I thought of a nerd (no offense to any Melvins out there). If you have a theory, I'd be interested in hearing it (you can send an email if you don't want to post it, though I think I've made at least some of Akira's plan pretty obvious). As for Giru, there are two very good reasons that he hasn't shown up...yet. First, his way of speaking is a pain in the ass to write; and Second, well he's coming, I just have to make up some sort of plausible reason for his absence.

Everyone Else: Thanks again for your reviews. I really appreciate them, they keep me motivated.


	33. In a Different Light

**Chapter 33: Memories**

o

A/N: There is one scene in here where one of the Z Fighters is experiencing Akira's memory. During that scene, whenever you see a word in bold, I'm referring to Akira and the other person together.

o

Gohan looked around at the group of humans and Saiyans who were all arguing over what they could do to help King Kai, what the sudden appearance of their murderer meant, and what Piccolo had said. The warrior scholar couldn't deny that his former teacher made some excellent points, but he had been there when Akira attacked him after killing Videl. No amount of clever arguments could change what he'd seen.

"Interesting discussion you guys are having," a familiar voice said as a ki popped into existence next to him.

All talking ceased for a moment as the Z Fighters, except Piccolo who hadn't moved from where he was meditating, turned to see a perfectly healthy (despite his recent captivity) looking King Kai. After a couple of seconds the silence ended as everyone began talking at once.

"King Kai!"

"Are you alright?"

"How did you escape?"

"What did he want?"

"Is he coming back?"

"Calm down, calm down. I'm just fine," the kai said with a smile.

"How did you get away?" Pan asked.

"I didn't get away; I was never a captive in the first place." The comment was met with eleven confused looks from the humans and saiyans and the tiniest hint of a smirk from the lone namek.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Vegeta demanded.

Akira came to me for help. He wanted to know if there was another namek around that could make a new set of dragonballs so he could revive you all."

"Why would he want to do that?" Trunks asked, "He regret killing us already?"

"Because Akira isn't the one that killed you." There was another moment of silence and then all eleven Z Fighters began yelling once again. King Kai sighed; this was going to take longer than he'd thought.

ooo

The lights were on in Melvin's house and Akira could still feel a presence inside.

_'Good,'_ he thought to himself, _'It would have been a pain to hunt him down.' _In truth, he wasn't sure what he would have done if the computer genius had fled; killed him probably, though if he did that he would have had to find himself a new computer repairman.

He stepped over the door he had broken down earlier that day and looked around. The house was surprisingly tidy, though most of it was obviously only used on extremely rare occasions.

"Hey Melvin, where are you?" His keen ears picked up some noises coming from downstairs, he followed the sound.

The basement was like another world. Where the upstairs area was tidy and filled with things Akira couldn't picture the computer genius ever using, the basement was a nerd's paradise. Comics, computer parts, and pizza boxes lay scattered everywhere; the walls were covered in posters of every Sci-Fi movie imaginable and also a few of a more questionable manner.

The saiyan scanned the room before his eyes came to rest on the beat up shell of Bulma's computer; he crossed the room and hit the power button, the monitor the computer was plugged into lit up instantly. Akira smiled, Melvin hadn't disappointed him.

"You can come out now," he told the lone closet in the basement, "I know you're in there."

The door slowly opened and a scared looking Melvin stepped out, his hands behind his back.

"Is all of the information still on here?" Akira asked, nodding towards the computer.

"Yeah, the only damage was to the..."

"I don't care; I was just looking for a 'yes.'" The last thing Akira wanted was to be dragged into a conversation that he wouldn't understand anyway. The computer worked, that was all he really cared about. "Well, er…thanks for fixing it," he felt like maybe he should apologize for threatening to kill the man, but wasn't sure how sorry he really was. He'd needed something done and the threat was the quickest way to make sure it happened.

"You're welcome, but you're not taking it," Melvin's voice was surprisingly firm.

Akira raised an eyebrow and smirked, "There really isn't anything you can do to stop me."

The human brought a gun around from behind his back and leveled it at Akira. "I did some checking, Capsule Corp was destroyed. No one has seen or heard from the Briefs since; the police say they're probably dead. I think they might like to have a word with you."

This was definitely not a conversation Akira felt like wasting his time with. "Move Melvin, before you get hurt."

"You aren't the one holding the gun," Melvin retorted, "You might be strong, but you're still flesh and blood." The saiyan shrugged and turned his back to the gun toting nerd, as he began searching for the information he sought; he heard Melvin call the police on his cell phone, but it didn't matter, he'd be long gone before they arrived.

It only took a minute to find everything Akira was looking for and another to save it to a disk (the idea of carrying the computer with him everywhere wasn't very appealing). When he was done he turned and began walking towards the stairs.

"Hey!" Melvin yelled, "I said you're going to stay right here."

Akira looked at him and sighed, "Melvin, do yourself a favor and shut up. You have no idea what you're dealing with." He kept walking.

Whether intentionally or by an inadvertent flinch of his finger, Melvin fired; the nerd's eyes widened in terror at what he'd just done and then went even wider at what hadn't happened. Akira's brain was not splattered on the wall and his body was still very much upright. The young man's hand was in front of his face, clenched in a fist. He grinned at the human as his fist tightened and then turned it over and dropped the dust he had made out of the bullet. Melvin's mouth hung open at the sight.

ooo

"Do you honestly expect me to believe this rubbish?" Vegeta asked with a scowl.

"You doubt my abilities?" King Kai replied evenly.

The Saiyan Prince scowled, "The boy hid his intentions from us for years; he's obviously skilled at lying. Besides, I was there, I _saw_ him kill Bulma."

"How sure are you that you saw what you _think_ you saw?" the kai retorted.

ooo

Akira had always thought the idea of an angel and a demon sitting on opposite shoulders, whispering into a person's ears was rather silly, which would explain why it was usually seen in the cartoons Pan and Bra always made fun of him for watching. However, as he stared at Melvin, he could almost feel the weight on each shoulder. Part of him was arguing that the nerd was just scared and that it didn't really matter because he couldn't stop Akira anyway. The other, louder, part was screaming for Melvin's blood, asking if he was going to back cowardly away from another challenge. This part's reason was flawed, idiotic even, and the young man gave in to it without a struggle.

"See, now why did you have to go and do that?" Akira asked, as his eyes filled with anger. "I was just going to walk out of here, go about my business, and let you get back to doing what ever it is you do with your evenings. Now...well, now I might have to kill you." He began walking towards the human.

Melvin fired a second shot, but this time the bullet passed right through Akira and hit the wall behind him as the saiyan faded away.

"When the first shot didn't work, did you really think a second would? I thought you were supposed to be a genius," Akira said from behind Melvin. The human spun and brought the gun up a second time, but the saiyan's hand latched onto it and squeezed, crushing both the gun and the hand that was holding it.

The nerd fell to the ground as he cried out in pain; Akira looked down at him curiously, he didn't even feel a prickle of remorse this time. Being mean (arguably even evil) was getting easier and easier.

"I think we're even," he said with a smile, "You fixed the computer, so I'll let you live, but you also tried to kill me, so I broke your hand. Fair's fair, right?"

Melvin was too busy whimpering and holding his destroyed hand to respond.

Akira shrugged, walked out of the house and shot into the air, heading north towards an expanse of mountains that seemed devoid of any man-made objects. It was the perfect place for a secret, Capsule Corp facility.

ooo

Vegeta's scowl deepened, it was pointless to try examining feelings and memories. He knew what he'd seen and if he got another chance he'd kill Akira without hesitation this time.

_"You're stronger than I thought you would be."_

_"Then you're even dumber than you look. We've been training together for the past three years; you should know everything about my abilities by now."_

_"If that's what you want to believe, but then those three years of training that _we_ did together don't seem to be helping you either."_

The Saiyan Prince's eye's narrowed, unsure of why that had popped into his mind, but suspecting King Kai had something to do with it. It was undeniable that the small conversation could have meant that the two in fact hadn't ever trained together, but Vegeta didn't like playing semantics, he would need real proof.

ooo

Pan wasn't sure what to think about King Kai's words. A few days ago it would have been exactly what she wanted to hear, but today was a new day and, despite a small feeling of desperate hope that Akira had, in fact, been innocent all along, she wouldn't leave herself open to be disappointed again. Akira was a murderer, she just had to accept that and move on.

_The sight that greeted her as she landed softly in the forest grove chilled her to her bones. Akira stood before her, covered in golden fur that was drenched in the blood of what looked like it had once been a deer, the creature's corpse was so mangled that it was impossible to tell for sure. The powerful warrior's metallic blue eyes locked on her and he sneered menacingly._

_She took a hesitant step back. "Akira? Are y...wha, what's wrong?"_

_Every instinct in her body told her to run; she could see the blood lust in his eyes..._

Pan flinched, that had been the first time she'd looked at Akira and feared him; perhaps if she had told the others about that experience, everyone would still be alive.

_"W...why are...you doing...th...this?" she gasped. "I thought...you...lov...ed me." _

_Akira laughed. "Me? Love you? Hardly! You were just something for me to play with, nothing more. But now that the time as come for the Arlean's revenge, it's time to throw my toy away." _

Pan shuddered; Akira's voice had been so cold, so ruthless. There was no doubt about his honesty when he'd said that to her, and even if there had been, he squashed that a second later when he killed her.

ooo

_"You're being controlled or something, but you can fight it."_

_"You really are dense, aren't you? I'm not being controlled; I've been this way since the day I came into this world."_

Gohan shook his head, as much as he wanted to believe King Kai, the fact remained that it was Akira who had killed him, his wife, and his daughter. He'd seen it, hadn't he?

_"This won't be like the Tenchiaki Bouduki. I won't hold back at all against you, even if it costs me my life."_

_"For being the 'smart one,' you sure are an idiot. You've never fought anyone like me."_

It was odd to think of those words in a different light. At the time, he'd thought Akira just meant that he was stronger than anything Gohan had faced, or that he was more ruthless than any of the scholar's previous opponents, but those words could also be taken to mean that he wasn't facing his daughter's boyfriend. Gohan's face scrunched up as his meticulous mind mulled over the memory.

ooo

"_Akira...we were friends...why are you doing this?"_

_"We have never been friends…"_

It was strange, Uubu thought, how a tiny snippet of a conversation could come back to you and mean something entirely different than you'd originally thought. Had Akira meant that he never considered Uubu his friend? Or had he meant that he and Uubu didn't really know each other? The Mystical One stared at the ground as he thought about it; suddenly Akira's guilt, which had been unquestionable in his mind since the moment he saw the young Saiyan begin attacking Bra, no longer seemed as certain.

ooo

"…_I really didn't kill anyone. Please, let me help you...once we've all recovered we can find the person who really did this." The young man took a step forward as if to help them to their feet, but Goten pulled a metal pole off the ground and swung it at him. Akira couldn't get his body to react fast enough to avoid the attack; there was a crunching noise as the pole smashed into his arm and then the young man's right arm hung limply at his side…_

…_The two Saiyans turned in surprise as they saw Akira step out of the shadows, looking surprisingly better than he had when they'd last seen him. "I think it's just kind of fun to play with your head right before I kill you…"_

…_The murderer smirked as he used his right hand to backhand the enraged, dark haired Saiyan into a wall…_

Goten was never the quickest thinker in the group. It wasn't that he was stupid or anything; he just had other people who were better at putting two and two together, so he let them handle that part for him. However, as he thought about the last few minutes of his life, it was as if he were seeing it in a new light. Something that he had never thought about or even given a second thought to suddenly seemed very important.

'_Akira used his right arm against me…but I heard it break when I hit him,'_ he thought to himself. _'He could have recovered with a senzu bean, it would explain why he wasn't as beat up when he reappeared, but were there any left?'_

It certainly didn't clear Akira's name. After all, he had seen Akira kill Kumo and that image wouldn't just go away, but it did cast uncertainty over the young man's guilt.

ooo

King Kai watched with amusement as the faces of many of the Z Fighters suddenly became filled with doubt about their previous conclusions. Telepathy was really useful in some situations. As he looked around the group he noticed Pan's face was not creased in confused thought, a quick brushing of her mind revealed why, she did not have any memories of the clone throwing out little cryptic clues. Her memories only reminded her of the apparent betrayal of the man she loved.

The kai stepped over to her and gently touched her arm. "Pan, I have something I want you to see."

"What is it?" she asked.

"One of Akira's memories. It didn't seem right to just share them openly with the whole group, but I think he would like you to know the truth, even though it will not be pleasant to see."

Pan looked at him with uncertainty, but nodded and closed her eyes as King Kai projected a memory into her mind.

_**They** appeared in the darkened building and looked around in confusion. It took **them** a moment to spot Pan's broken, bleeding body, but when **they** did **they** were instantly at her side._

It was strange for Pan to see the memory like this, through Akira's eyes as he/they looked down at her body. It was one of the most intimate things she'd ever experienced; she knew his every thought, felt his every emotion. The horror and fear that she felt as she looked down at her body was his, the guilt was his, the knowledge that he couldn't live without her, didn't want to live without her, was all his. In a sense, she was Akira.

_"Pan?" **they** asked, kneeling next to her and gently touching her bruised face. Her eyes remained closed in unconsciousness, **they** could feel her quickly slipping away. "Oh Kami! Pan, wake up honey...please, you have to hang on." **They** looked around frantically, trying to think of what **they** could do. **They** weren't sure where **they** were in the city (or even what city **they** were in), so it didn't seem likely that **they'd** find a hospital in time, but if **they** didn't do something, Pan would be dead in moments._

_**They** thought about picking her up, but one look at the large hole in her stomach told **them** that moving her would do as much harm as good. If **they** tried to move her she would die, if **they** left her where she was she would die; there was nothing that **they** could do._

_**They** took her hand in theirs and squeezed it, "Please Pan. Please don't leave me," **they** whispered, lowering **their** head to hers._

_Even as the words left **their** lips, **they** felt her life force fade away. **Akira-Pan** pulled her onto **their** lap, kissing her bloodied forehead and rocking back and forth as **they** cried._

Pan didn't want to be in this memory any more, the pain she was feeling from Akira was overwhelming, she was drowning in his feelings of loss and despair.

/Only a moment longer,/ King Kai whispered in her mind, /For you to understand, there's still a little more you need to see./

_**They'd** failed her. Failed **their** friends. Failed everyone. Though **their** mind was far from focused enough to be sure, **they** couldn't feel any of the others; **their** friends could have all been wiped out while **they'd** been hiding in the mountains. **They** should have helped them or at least died with them, but instead **they'd** pushed them away. The others' deaths were on **their** head, their blood on **their** hands. In the end **they** hadn't been the one killing them, but **their** fear and **their** refusal to seek help had left them one defender down. With **their** Instant Transmission alone **they** might have been able to help Pan or any of the others who had been killed._

_**They** threw **their** head back and screamed in rage as **their** barrier fell away and **their** golden aura exploded around **them**. The whole city shook under the force of **their** power; and then as quickly as it had started, **their** aura faded away and the barrier returned._

Pan collapsed to the ground as King Kai released her and the memory faded, tears ran down her face as she struggled to catch her breath. The rest of the Z Fighters awoke from their own memories and turned to stare at her; Gohan started forward to help her up, but King Kai stopped him.

"Give her a moment," the kai said in a quiet voice.

As Pan pulled herself to her hands and knees, her body was wracked with pain and grief, she wasn't sure where her own emotions ended and the ones from Akira's memory began. Slowly, she regained control of herself, though the tears did not stop falling.

"Oh Kami," she whispered, "The last thing I said to him was that I hated him…"

ooo

Akira gently touched down next to a large mountain that looked just like all the others, but inside this one he could sense several life forces; he'd finally arrived. It took him a moment to spot the small, slightly camouflaged building next to the base of the mountain, but when he did, he headed straight for it.

He knocked gently on the door and waited patiently for an answer.

None came.

"Hello, I know you're in there, come on an open up," he called out in a loud voice.

Still no answer.

Hey, my name is Akira Mas…er, Briefs, I'm Bulma's son. I demand that you open this door immediately!"

Suddenly, the door swung open and five large, heavily armed guards stepped out.

"Do you have a pass?" one of them asked.

"No, but I'm just here to pick something up for Bulma. It won't take long."

"If you don't have a pass then you must leave immediately."

"I don't think you understand," Akira said as a grin slowly spread across his face, "I'm here for the time machine and I'm not leaving without it."

Five guns leveled at him simultaneously; apparently he'd said the magic word. Less than ten seconds later, the guards were all lying on the ground next to their destroyed weapons, each had no less than four broken bones and none would be getting up anytime soon. Akira walked into the base, his large grin still firmly in place.

o

o

A/N: Well there you have it, the plan is in motion, the Z Fighters sort of know that Akira didn't kill them (they just have to accept the truth now), and Akira is no longer a very good guy. I hope you guys liked the scene with Pan seeing Akira's memory, originally it was just like all the other flashbacks, but then the whole '**they'** idea came to me and I liked it so much I had to put it in there. Well, let me know what you thought of it and thanks for all the reviews!


	34. Descent

**Chapter 34: Descent**

o

As Akira walked through the halls of the secret Capsule Corp facility, the grin that had been on his face when he entered slowly began to fade, replaced by a look of grim determination. He was so close. In a matter of minutes he would be in the past. He would get himself a namek who would make a new set of dragonballs in this time or else just make his wish with the dragon from the past. It didn't matter which he did as long as the wish could be made and his friends revived. And then Akira would hunt down the one responsible for their deaths and he would tear the Arlean's flesh from his bones.

A guard stepped in front of him, raising a gun and ordering him to stop. Akira calmly grabbed the man by his shirt and slammed him into a wall. The guard fell to the ground either unconscious or dead. The saiyan would prefer it if the man lived, but he didn't bother slowing down to check.

As he walked away from the guard, the thought popped into his head that the man might have a family and that if he was dead they would grieve just as Akira was grieving over the loss of his family. Guilt struck him instantly and he almost turned back, but he quickly shook the feeling off and banished the thoughts from his mind. He couldn't let himself indulge in such foolish speculation or worry, he had promised himself that he would resurrect the others and that's what he was going to do…no matter what it took.

That scene replayed itself several times as Akira made his way towards a large cluster of life forces that he could feel deep within the mountain. He would walk about a hundred paces, a guard or group of guards would step out and try to stop him, and he would leave them in a pile before continuing on. He didn't try to kill any of them, but he didn't try to keep them a live either. If they lived, they lived; if they died, they died. It wasn't really his concern. He didn't even hold them any ill will, they just got in his way and he crushed them; it wasn't their fault and it wasn't his, it was just what it was.

Finally he reached his goal. A large metal door stood in his path, but beyond it he could feel several low power levels. He powered up slightly and knocked the door off its hinges with a single punch.

The scientists standing around inside the enormous room that Akira now found himself in looked up in surprise as the large, titanium-reinforced door crashed to the ground. The young man's dark eyes scanned the area briefly, there were at least twelve people in lab coats, surely one of them would know how to operate the large space ship/time machine that took up most of the room.

"I'm taking the time machine," he announced to the stunned crowd of people, "but I need someone to tell me how it works first." The scientists continued staring at him as if he had a third arm growing out of his forehead for a moment and then they all took off running in different directions.

Akira sighed. Why did everyone insist on making this harder than it had to be?

ooo

King Kai's hand rested against Gohan's chest, holding him back from running to his daughter who was still trying to recover from whatever the kai had done to her. The saiyan knew he could easily knock the hand away and run to Pan, but for some reason his body wouldn't respond and so he stared at her as she climbed to her hands and knees and then stood, her face streaked with tears. She closed her eyes and took several deep, calming breaths forcing her body to submit to her desire to cease her sobbing and crying.

"Thank you, King Kai," she whispered.

The kai released Gohan and smiled apologetically, "I'm sorry it wasn't an easy thing for you to see."

"No, I'm glad. It...it helped me to see just how he felt about me...how much he loves me." A moment of silence fell over the group, most of whom had very little idea what was going on.

"Would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on?" Vegeta's agitated voice cut through the silence and brought everyone back to reality.

"Akira didn't do it," Pan replied, a strange mix of joy and sorrow in her voice. Though she tried to stop it, her mind continued to play her last words to the man she loved over and over in her mind. _"I hate you."_ It would shame her for all of eternity if those were the last words he ever heard from her.

"Well, I'm glad _you're_ convinced, but that doesn't change what I saw with my own eyes," the Prince replied gruffly. "You want him to be innocent; you'd latch on to anything that gives you even the tiniest whisper of a hope that he didn't play you for a fool all this time."

Pan's hand clenched into a fist and her leg muscles flexed as she prepared to launch herself at Vegeta, but before she could make her move, King Kai stepped between the two.

A small smirk appeared on the kai's face as he asked, "Then shall we go meet the killer? I suppose in the end this is the quickest way to end an argument that could go on for centuries."

Vegeta looked slightly taken aback at the question, though he quickly recovered and nodded. It wasn't that he didn't want Akira to be innocent; the boy had been his friend, more than that even. The Saiyan Prince found himself confused whenever he thought of Akira; on the one hand Akira was (in an overly simplified way of looking at it) the reincarnation of Kakarot, Vegeta's best friend, though he still had trouble admitting that he'd grown to like the third class warrior. But the boy was more than that to him, over the years Vegeta had inadvertently begun feeling a sense of fatherly pride in the man Akira was becoming; the young man was like a second son to the Prince, and that had made his apparent betrayal all the harder to take. Vegeta wanted Akira to be innocent, but friendship and trust were not things that he gave very easily, he needed to know without a shadow of a doubt that he hadn't been wrong to place his trust in Akira.

All of the Z Fighters placed their hands on King Kai's back and in an instant they were gone.

ooo

Akira held out his hand and fired a small ki blast at the ground in front of one of the fleeing scientists; the explosion tossed the woman and the man who was running next to her into the air. They hit the ground hard, but moved just enough to assure the saiyan that they were alive. He repeated this action over and over until all of the men and women in lab coats were lying on the floor, moaning in pain or remaining still in unconsciousness.

The young man searched for one that would stand out as some sort of leader, but they were all dressed identically, so he just took the closest one to him at that moment.

"What's your name?" he asked a woman with long blond hair.

"B, Barbra…" she said softly, her eyes wide with terror.

"Barbie, eh?" he smirked, "Well, Scientist Barbie, I want you to tell me how to work this miracle of technology over here."

"I…uh, it…it doesn't work…" she was trembling now.

Akira scowled. "Don't lie to me," he warned, his voice filled with barely controlled anger, "I know it works, Bulma told me it would work."

Barbra shook her head as tears filled her eyes, "P, please don't hurt me…" she whimpered. "I…I swear, it doesn't work…"

"What's wrong with it?"

"T, the fuel isn't sufficient…the ship can fly, but it can't create a large enough space-time rift."

Akira stared into her eyes, trying to find a hint of deceit, but found none. "Can one of you make something strong enough?" One of the other scientists tried to run while the saiyan was distracted, without even turning his head; Akira pointed a finger and shot the man through the knee with a small ki blast. The woman in front of him was sobbing now, certain of her impending death.

When she didn't answer, Akira reached down, grabbed her jacket in his hands and lifted her up to face him. "I said, 'can one of you make a better fuel?'"

"N, no…oh kami, I, I…please don't kill me…"

Akira gave her a shake and yelled, "That's bullshit! Who made the first fuel? Whoever it was will just have to make something stronger!"

"It, it was Dr. B, Briefs."

Akira dropped Barbra on her butt and put his face in his hands. It wasn't supposed to be this way; it wasn't supposed to be this hard to get them back. The universe was conspiring against him to keep his friends dead, to force him to be alone. With a cry of rage Akira drove his fist into the ground all the way up to his elbow.

Barbra fainted. An older man a few feet away from her wet his pants.

Akira sat there, breathing hard, his arm still half buried in the floor. Finally, his anger somewhat under control, the saiyan stood and walked over to the ship. A few scientists started to inch their way towards the exit.

"If one of you moves another inch, I'll kill every last one of you," Akira hissed without moving his eyes from the time machine.

The group instantly froze.

He stepped close to the door, but it didn't open. A quick search revealed a scanner with a hand drawn on it; Akira pressed his hand against it.

The scanner turned red and beeped unpleasantly at him. The door remained closed.

Akira looked back at the group of frightened humans. "How do I open this?"

One in the group hesitantly raised his hand and said, "Your handprint has to be entered into the ships files."

"Can you open it and put my hand print in the ships files?"

"W, well yes, but…but you aren't really going to steal it…are you?"

Akira rolled his eyes, "Where the hell have you been? Of course I'm going to steal it, at least for now. When I'm done with it, Bulma can have it back."

"N, no, I won't help you steal it; that ship is too dangerous in the wrong hands," the man seemed to grow more confident as he spoke as his face filled with defiance.

The saiyan looked at everyone in the room; they all wore similar expressions on their faces. If he was going to get any help, he had to squash this little rebellion right now. "Tell me, will your hand still open the door if it's no longer attached to your body?"

The scientist was definitely no longer defiant; all color seemed to drain from his face as he stared at Akira in shock.

Akira held up one hand and forced his ki to become visible, the white aura enveloping his hand. "I promise, it only hurts for a little while," he said with a grin. "Maybe I'll just take every hand in here, that way I always have a spar."

There was a stampede of lab coats rushing forward to open the door for him. Moments later he was inside, his hand print had been uploaded, and the instructions on how to operate the ship were displayed in front of him.

Akira stared at the difficult to follow directions and began to think that he should try to force one of the scientists to teach him how to do it. They had claimed not to know, saying that their department was building, not flying, but Akira was sure one of them had to know something about it. He was just about to stand and see if he could catch one before they got out of the mountain when he heard a noise behind him. It wasn't the heavy footed noise of a guard, nor was it the soft footsteps of a scientist trying to sneak away, it was…

Akira spun around and found himself face to…whatever with a strange, round robot.

ooo

King Kai and the other Z Fighters appeared on a desolate strip of land that had some of the ugliest mountains and rock formations Pan had ever seen. She looked around in confusion, trying to figure out where there would be a dessert with purple rocks and a pink sky.

Vegeta and Piccolo both gasped at the sight.

"What the hell are we doing here?" Vegeta demanded with a hint of panic in his voice.

"Well, where else would you expect your murderer to be held?" King Kai asked as he arched an eyebrow.

"Where are we?" Pan whispered to Piccolo.

"This is Hell," the namek replied. King Kai cleared his throat and glared at Piccolo, who rolled his eyes and then amended his statement, "I mean, this is the 'Home For Infinite Losers', also known as HFIL."

"Come on," King Kai said almost cheerfully, "The quicker we get there, the quicker we can leave." He led the Z Fighters to a near by cliff face.

The cliff turned out to be something of a prison, its base was lined with cells that had red, glowing bars on the front of them. Pan wasn't sure why the bars glowed, but when she put a hand near them, she could feel some of her energy leave her. Somehow the bars could drain ki.

"Well, here we are," King Kai said, pointing to one of the cells. "Go gawk at the real murderer and then come back once you're convinced, I'll be over here talking with Mezu." He indicated a red ogre with a thick pair of glasses and two horns sticking out of his short, black hair.

The group stepped up to the cell and looked in; there was a collective intake of breath.

Akira, or at least someone who looked just like Akira, was sitting cross-legged in the cell, watching them and scowling. "What a sick a twisted universe we must live in if I am stuck in hell and Vegeta the Genocide is allowed to walk freely."

There was no longer any doubt in any of the Z Fighters about the truth.

o

o

A/N: Okay, first let me say that I'm really sorry this took so long to post (and it's pretty short on top of that). I guess after posting three chapters in four days I was a little fried, because this chapter was a pain to write (some of the annoying stuff even got pushed into the next chapter just so I wouldn't have to deal with it). I actually had this chapter completely written out about three days ago, but when I proof read it I declared it the worst crap I'd ever written and tossed it completely out. I'm still not really satisfied with it, but it's much improved over my earlier versions. Anyway, I'm hoping to have at least one more chapter done before next Wednesday because I'm going out of town for Christmas and a wedding and probably won't be able to update until at least the first week of January.

Also, before I forget, I (with the help of Nadz) started a C2 group dedicated to stories that take place after GT (or after DBZ if the author chooses to ignore GT). It's called _The Saga Continues_. Pretty catchy, huh? Anyway, if you happen to like stories like that, check it out. And if you know of any that aren't on there yet let me know.

Rejhan: I want a happy ending too, but I'm beginning to wonder if I can swing it. I mean, I know that as this is my story, technically I can make anything I want happen, but I don't know if I can find a good way for all to be hunky-dory in the end. I know it won't be an **un**happy ending, but…well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Dynasty Drummer and Serbo-Maco: I'm glad you two like both of my stories so much. I kind of disliked this story at first, but now that things are moving a bit, I agree that it is the better of my two stories. However, after reading the Ammit Saga over I have to say that the last battle was some of my best work. I read it and thought, "wow, did I really write this? I didn't know I was that good!" Haha, that sounds a little cocky, but I'm pretty proud of how the Ammit fight turned out. Anyway, thanks for reading and for the review.

Son Oliver: There, everyone knows now without a shadow of a doubt. In the next chapter there will be a little more interaction with the clone, but they officially now know. You were right, I did dance around it quite a bit, but I needed something for the dead Z Fighters to do and describing them training over and over and over and over just wasn't very exciting.

Nadz: The Arlean's device was removed, remember? It happened after Akira got his ass kicked by the clone. I had to use bold on the 'they' thing in the memory because there were other parts that had a 'they' referring to the Z Fighters who'd been killed and a couple of the sentences would have sounded weird. I suppose if I wasn't being so lazy I could have just gone through and made it work better, but this was easier.

TheTiny: There was actually a scene in chapter 32 where King Kai made the same observation (about Akira being more like Vegeta now), but I cut it because I couldn't get it to sound right. I'm glad you caught it, it was sort of the idea I was trying to get across.


	35. Three Months Later

**Chapter 35: Three Months Later**

o

"_Akira…why didn't you save me?" Pan whispered as blood flowed out of the wound in her stomach and dripped from the remains of her crushed hand. "You were supposed to be here for me, but you failed…just like you did when we fought Ammit."_

_Akira backed away from her as he tried to think of something to say, some excuse, some explanation for his failure, but there was no excuse and he knew it. He simply let her down every time it really mattered and this time it had cost Pan her life._

_Pan's eyes hardened slightly as her gaze bore into his soul. "I hate you," she whispered, blood spewing out of her mouth. "I hate you," she said in a louder voice. "I hate you!" she was screaming now as she stood and advanced on him._

_Akira's eyes widened as he continued backing away, still trying to think of something to tell her. He wanted to let her know that he was sorry, that it wasn't really his fault, that he was going to make it better as soon as he could, but his excuses refused to form on his lips._

_Her one good hand shoved him in the chest, causing him to stumble and fall. "You're the one that should be dead!" she screamed. "You didn't deserve to live while my family and I were killed." Her hand glowed slightly as energy surrounded it. "I hope you burn in hell!"_

_The beam leapt from her hand and raced towards the young man._

Akira awoke with a start, sweat flowing down his face as his chest heaved with labored breathing. His hands hurt, but he wasn't sure why until he looked down and found that he had clenched them so tightly that his finger nails had dug into his palms, reopening wounds that had formed the first time he had the dream. In fact, he had yet to sleep without being visited by some vision of Pan or his other friends who had lost their lives at the hands of his clone; this dream had been almost tame compared to some of the other ones he'd had.

As his breathing returned to normal, Akira stood and headed for the gravity room. Along the way he stopped and checked the navicomputer. The ship was only a few hours away from its next destination, a planet that Giru had said was fairly technologically advanced.

Akira had initially planned on dumping the little robot as soon as he had the chance, but Giru knew of several planets that might be able to produce a fuel that would meet the time machine's power needs. Giru also knew a lot more about the ship than Akira and, while Bulma's space ship could almost fly itself, the young man didn't want to take the chance that he could be stranded in space if there was some sort of malfunction. So, while the little, round robot was something of an annoyance, at least it had learned to stay silent around Akira unless directly spoken to and managed to make itself useful from time to time.

Just before he resumed his course to the gravity room, Akira noticed the date on the computer.

'_Three months,'_ he thought, _'I've been at this for three months already and still aren't any closer to bringing them back than I was on day one.'_

The thought was disheartening. He remembered Pan and Vegeta telling him in more than one story that the dragonballs could only revive someone if they were wished back within a year of their death. Akira wasn't sure whose year it was that was counted; after all, a year for someone on Pluto was nearly 250 years on Earth. Another part of the rule that he was unclear on was how that would work if he ended up making the wish in another timeline. He suspected that the rule would be held as a year on the planet the wish was made from or a year on the planet that the deaths had occurred no matter what time line the wish was made from and he doubted he could argue his way into an extension. That meant that he had less than nine months if he wanted to bring back Vegeta and Bulma as well. With the time between destinations growing as the ship traveled further and further into space, Akira knew that if he didn't find someone or something that could help him soon, he would be too late to do any good.

The young man sighed and forced himself to concentrate on the present, it wasn't like he could will the ship to move any faster by worrying. He set the gravity to 600G and began his workout, doing his best not to think of the raven haired girl whose broken body haunted his dreams.

ooo

_'Three months,'_ Pan thought as she stared out the window of the airplane that was taking her to Paradise to visit her mother and grandmother again. _'Three months without a single hint of what he's doing or where he is. Does he still plan on bringing me back? Does he want to see me again after what I said to him?'_ The thought was frightening, but something told her that Akira would not give up on her over some harsh words spoken out of shameful ignorance.

The young saiyan sighed as pink shapeless clouds floated by. Unlike the few previous trips she'd taken to Paradise, this time Pan was traveling alone. She'd been banished from the Z Fighters' training until she was a little more on the sane side.

In all fairness, she supposed that she did deserve it. After all, she had been pestering King Kai day and night for any information on Akira's whereabouts and actions even though she knew that she would be the first to find out if and when the kai heard anything. Apparently this morning he'd finally reached his breaking point and had told her that if she wasn't going to train anything but her tongue she should go visit her mother.

Actually, he hadn't used the word 'visit,' his exact words had been a little more colorful, as had her retort.

She hadn't really meant to annoy the kai; she just wanted to hear that Akira was okay. In the brief time between King Kai showing her Akira's memory and her visit to HFIL to see the clone, she'd let herself entertain the happy thought that Akira would wish them all back and then the two of them would go back to college, graduate, get married, buy a house, have 2.5 kids, and live happily ever after. After seeing the clone and briefly talking with him, she wasn't so sure that her happily ever after could happen. Not that she didn't want a happily ever after, but the words the clone had spoken had chilled her to the bone and caused her to wonder what sort of person the man she loved was becoming.

ooo

Trunks and Goten were having trouble getting used to the loss of their Super Saiyan 4 transformation. They had known that it was bound to happen sooner or later, just as it did with Vegeta, but the feeling of weakness was still difficult to adjust to, as was the now constant beating the two men received at the hands of a very gleeful Vegeta. However, the loss of the transformation had given King Kai the idea of 'returning' the five saiyan warriors' tails to them, though they cringed when they were informed of exactly how Goku's tail was regrown.

_'Maybe it won't be as bad as I'm imagining,'_ Goten thought as he watched Vegeta sidestep a kick from Trunks who was promptly sent flying by an uppercut from Gohan. _'I'm sure having my tail stretched out by a pair of pliers will be LOTS of fun...'_

The saiyan cringed for a moment and then headed towards the spot where he could feel Piccolo and Tien sparring, hoping to get a decent workout that didn't involve Vegeta's constant taunting.

ooo

_"Why did you do this?" Pan demanded. "What did we ever do to you?"_

_"You were born," the clone replied with a look of contempt. "Your race destroyed the Arleans, you're butchers, but for some reason the universe decided that you should live on, find peace and multiply. We were simply making things right."_

_Pan looked at the twisted picture of her boyfriend with a hint of sadness, "I can't believe that I thought you were Akira, you're disgusting. You could never compare with something as pure and good as him. No wonder he was able to kill you with ease."_

_The clone laughed and leaned his head back against the wall of his cell, "Pure and good, huh? I guess you don't know your little boyfriend as well as you think."_

_"And what's that supposed to mean?" the saiyan woman snapped._

_"No, no, go on thinking he's a good guy...you don't want to know what he's capable of, what he did during our fight."_

_A hint of uncertainty and curiosity floated across Pan's face. She opened her mouth to ask what the clone was talking about, but Gohan placed a hand on her shoulder._

_"Come on Pan, you don't need to hear anything this thing has to say, it will only be a bunch of lies anyway."_

_The clone smiled again, "Actually, in this case, the truth is much better than lying. I could never have come up with a lie that topped what goody-two-shoes Akira did...and it's not like you couldn't ask that kai friend of yours if I'm telling the truth or not, I'm sure he knows everything."_

_Pan swallowed hard and bit her lip as she tried to decide what she wanted. Would it really be so bad just to hear it? She would know that he was lying or at least embellishing the story to cast Akira in a bad light, and then she could ask King Kai for the real story. She knew the Kai was not omniscient, but she suspected that he knew more from Akira's memories than he had shared with her so far and she felt a pulling deep within her to hear everything that had happened to her boyfriend after her death._

_"Alright, tell me," she said in a voice that shook slightly with uncertainty._

_"Pan, no. Don't do this," Gohan begged her. He could see in the clone's eyes that the vile creature was only looking to hurt his daughter; true or not, this was not something that Pan should hear._

_"No, I want to hear what he has to say." She turned to the clone and grinned, "Tell me about your fight with Akira; let me hear how he made you suffer for what you did."_

_The clone's eyes were shining triumphantly. "Oh, he made me suffer alright..." _

_And then he proceeded to relate every gory detail of his fight and subsequent torture at the hands of Akira. At first Pan had reviled in the thought of the clone finally getting what he deserved, but as the story went on and on, her face fell and her heart sank. If half of what the clone said was true, then Akira had been consumed by his anger and grief. He had become a monster, at least for a brief period of time._

_"...and then he thrust the sword into my chest and ripped me open with his bare hands, just so he could be covered in my gore," the clone said as he finished the story._

_Pan was silent for a moment and then she said, "Good. You deserved it." She would not let the clone drive a wedge between her and Akira again. If her love had done something evil like this, it was only because of the suffering the clone had unleashed on all of his friends. Akira wouldn't have been in his right mind when he fought the clone, the things he did were excusable._

_"You think he did these things out of justice?" the clone asked, "That he was just getting revenge for what I did to you and your family." He roared with laughter, "You really are devoted to him, I'll give you that. However, he didn't do it for you. Not in the end. In the end he tore me apart and covered himself in blood because he liked it. Because he is nothing but a barbaric monkey and that's what sick, fucked up saiyans do!"_

_"You're wrong," Pan spat back._

_"Am I? You weren't there; you didn't see the look on his face as he stuck his finger in my eyes and burned them out. You're little boyfriend is a killer, plain and simple, and he enjoys it. I might have killed a lot of people, even took some pleasure in it, but I've got nothing on your precious Akira."_

_Pan wanted to run, to flee from the words of the clone, but she stayed rooted in her spot. She wouldn't give him the pleasure of seeing the effect his words had on her. She wished she hadn't asked, but it was too late to take it back now. She still loved Akira; she would stand up for him and wait for him to either wish her back or join her in the after life. She just hoped that when they finally met again, she would be getting her Akira back and not the monster the clone had described him as. _

_There was also the hope that the clone had been lying, that the story was just another attempt to hurt her, but somehow she knew that most of it was true. She'd seen the dead look in Akira's eyes when he'd come to get King Kai, it was the look of a man who'd given up on life, the look of a man who could do everything the clone described and more._

_"Anything he did to you is on your own head," she told the clone, "you took everything from him. I hope you rot in this cage for all of eternity." And then she walked away, heading towards King Kai; most of the Z Fighters that had silently watched the whole exchange following behind her._

Pan snapped out of the memory with a sick feeling in her stomach. She hoped spending some time with her family in Paradise would ease the anxiety she felt for Akira.

ooo

After a few hours of smacking Gohan and Trunks around, Vegeta had grown tired of training and had decided to take a break. As he watched his first born begin to spar one on one with the Kakarot's oldest child, the Saiyan Prince's mind gradually turned towards the struggles his adopted son was going through.

Vegeta doubted that anyone else could understand what Akira was going through. He remembered his own time spent in the darkness of despair. He remembered living every day with the single goal of becoming strong enough to crush that worthless lizard Frieza, to make him feel the pain of all the years the young Prince had been tormented. To get that power he would have done anything, he'd wiped out dozens of planets and killed millions of people during his quest. He'd even killed one of his fellow saiyans and tried to kill another. Nothing and no one had mattered except the power he sought, he suspected Akira was going through that same hell today.

It was frightening for Vegeta to think of what he would have done with powers similar to Akira's back when he was struggling under Frieza. At the time, though he had thought himself quite strong, he'd been a weakling; Trunks had been born with a power level that nearly surpassed what Vegeta's before he came to Earth. If Vegeta had been as strong as Akira or even as strong as he himself was now, he had no doubt the universe would be a very different place, filled with a lot less people.

The Saiyan Prince hoped that Akira would find peace or at least accomplish his goal before he did something he would regret.

ooo

The computer beeped at Akira alerting him that the ship would be arriving at its latest destination in less than an hour. The saiyan turned off the gravity machine and headed for the shower. Chances were there wouldn't be anyone here that could help him; after all, there hadn't been anyone at any of the other planets, why should this one be different? Still if he was going to be disappointed, he might as well smell nice while being disappointed.

He would be disappointed, but not as much as he had originally assumed.

o

o

A/N: I'm pretty sure this chapter or the next one will make this story longer than the Ammit Saga and the Ammit Saga was 21 chapters longer than this one is so far. I guess this means that I'm either getting better at writing or just rambling more. Sorry this chapter took a while and had almost no action what so ever. Sadly I wasn't able to work on this story while on vacation, but perhaps the break did me some good as I came back with a renewed sense of where this story was going and what was going to happen along the way. There will be at least one or two more time jumps (like the one in this chapter) depending on how the next chapter comes out. Unfortunately I think the next two chapters will be rather focused on Akira so I can complete his transformation into the person he needs to be; also, the other Z Fighters aren't doing a whole lot (what with being dead and all) so they're kind of boring. Anyway, please review and let me know what you thought.

Courtney: Wow, I think that last chapter was up for about 10 minutes and you had already reviewed it! I was pretty impressed. As for your thoughts on whether or not Akira can change things in his time by doing anything in the past, you're right, he can't. However, there isn't anything that says he can't make a wish in the past that affects his timeline or at the very least bring a namek back to his time and politely ask him/force him under threat of bodily harm to make a new set of dragonballs.

Draco the Destroyer: Hehe, I kind of chuckled when I read your review about Akira repenting for his sins. I suppose he has kind of been a bit of a bastard, but he hasn't done anything too terrible…yet.

Nasuren: I'm pretty sure that dbz made it clear that nothing done in the past can affect a time traveler's timeline. So Akira won't have anyone staying on the planet and hiding. At the moment the plan is either to bring one to the future and ask (or force) him to make a new set of dragonballs or make the wish from the past.

Everyone Else: Thanks as always for your reviews hopefully this chapter wasn't disappointing after the long wait, but if it was…well, sorry, not much I can do about it now.


	36. Bounty

**Chapter 36: Bounty**

o

Akira stepped off the Capsule Corp ship and immediately squeezed his eyes shut against the intense light of the Tarus Three's twin blue suns. After spending two weeks in the artificial light of his space ship any real sunlight would have taken some time to adjust to; however the light bombarding this planet was so bright it was unbearable.

"Here off-worlder, you need these," a strange voice said as a pair of goggles were pressed into Akira's hand.

The saiyan quickly put them on and then carefully opened his eyes. The dark goggles made the world around him tolerable to look at, but also gave everything an ugly grey coloring.

Akira hated this planet already.

The young man turned his attention to the short alien that had handed him the goggles. The creature was obviously some sort of rodent, his large front teeth protruded from his mouth and his whiskers twitched as he stared at Akira through his goggles. The alien was covered in either white or grey hair, though it was hard to tell which with the tint of the goggles, and had a long tail which trailed behind him.

"You staying long off-worlder?" the rodent asked.

"Uh, I'm not really sure," Akira replied. "I'm looking for some fuel for my ship."

"I got fuel!" the alien exclaimed, apparently very excited about the opportunity to sell something to the young man. "What kind you need?"

Akira sighed and handed over a data pad with the fuel requirements on it. He already knew how the conversation would go; it was the same on every planet he'd visited. The port attendants were always happy to sell him fuel until they saw what he needed, and then they told him no one they knew of had anything like that.

"Wow, I don't got anything like that," the alien said as he scratched the side of his long nose.

_'Shocker,'_ Akira thought as he took back the data pad and looked around at his bleak surroundings. "Do you know anyone who does?" the question was more of a habit than anything, the saiyan was pretty sure this planet was just another dead end for him.

"Eh, I don't think so..." the rodent predictably replied, but then he snapped his fingers and said, "Oh wait, there was one guy. He travels a lot, you know? He might know something."

Akira was instantly interested in the short alien once again. "Who is he? Where is he at?"

The alien held out his hand, as he pretended to think. Akira looked from the hand to the alien and then back to the hand until finally he realized what was going on. "You want money?" he asked cautiously.

"Well, money _would_ help me think faster. I don't remember so well where this guy is..."

Akira reached into his pocket and pulled out a few zeni, glad that he had picked up some money before leaving Earth.

"What's this?" the alien asked, holding the money close to his goggles to examine it closely.

"They're zeni, Earth currency."

"Earth? Didn't that planet get blown up?"

Akira smiled, "Not recently."

The little rodent looked at the saiyan for a moment and then back at the money before handing it back to Akira and saying, "If you don't got no real money, I don't know where this guy is."

Akira grabbed the alien by his throat and lifted him off the ground, "Tell me where he is!"

"Okay, okay, I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" the little rodent squeaked.

Akira's free hand glowed as he powered up a ki blast and held it in front of the frantic alien. "Think quickly." he growled.

"Alright, alright! He's...got a shop..." the alien gasped as Akira's grip cut off his air supply.

The saiyan dropped the little creature and stood over him, a menacing glare on his face and his tail swishing behind him in agitation as the energy in his hand continued to glow. "Where?"

The alien's eyes widened slightly at the sight of Akira's tail, but he quickly said, "Take the main road until you're past the food district. Turn on the second side street on your right; Sakeman's shop is on the left. It's called Sakeman's Winkle, whatever that means. You can't miss it."

"You'd best hope not."

"It's there, I swear on my litter."

Akira wasn't sure what that meant, but he assumed it meant the rodent was telling the truth. "Okay, how much do I owe you for docking?"

"N,no charge...it's on the house..."

"Thanks, that's very...generous of you," Akira said with a smile as he took to the air, quickly spotting the main road and heading towards it.

He didn't see the small smile that crept over the alien's face, nor did he see the rodent pull out a communication device and begin carrying on an excited conversation with who ever was on the other side.

ooo

"Pan? What are you doing here?" Videl asked when she saw her daughter walking towards the part of the beach where she, Bulma, Chi-chi, and all the other parents were watching Bra and Kumo splash each other in the crystal clear lake.

"I'm…uh, grounded from training, I guess," she replied with a sheepish grin.

"Grounded? How on Earth did you get grounded?"

Pan shrugged, "King Kai just over reacted when I asked him if he'd heard anything about Akira. I mean, I think that's a perfectly normal thing to ask about, don't you?"

One of Videl's eyebrows arched considerably as she gave her daughter the Look. The Look that only a mother could give and told Pan she knew there was more to it than that.

"Alright, so I asked him about Akira a _couple_ of times…"

Videl continued giving the Look.

"Okay, so I've asked everyday since we found out Akira didn't kill us, but still that's not _that_ bad."

The Look did not waver.

Pan sighed and looked down at the perfectly groomed sand. "I ask about four times a day…sometimes more," she confessed.

Videl smiled at her daughter and then started floating down the beach, signaling for Pan to follow her. After they had put a bit of distance between themselves and the others so they could have some privacy, Videl turned Pan and said, "It's natural for you to worry about him, but you know, Akira can take care of himself. Rumor has it that he's pretty strong."

"I know, but…" the young woman's voice trailed off as she tried to phrase her concern in a way that wouldn't require a retelling of the clone's torture. "I mean, he's lost everything…and I told him I hated him…"

"Don't worry about that, he knows how you really feel. And I'm sure he'll be figuring out a way to bring us all back any day now."

Pan felt a wonderful burst of hope at her mother's words, but quickly reminded herself how difficult that would be. "How? There aren't anymore dragonballs out there."

"After watching your father and grandfather for all those years, I never bet against a saiyan that's set his mind on something," Videl chuckled at the memory of all the crazy things she'd seen Gohan and Goku do through the force of their will alone.

Pan didn't feel convinced. "Akira's not like grandpa…"

"I know they're different people, but they're still kind of the same, right?" Videl had never quite understood Akira's relationship with Goku, but the two shared a soul or something so at their core they must be the same basic person.

"Sort of," Pan admitted, "but Akira's not…as strong as Grandpa, at least not mentally."

Videl nearly laughed out loud at Pan's statement, but managed to hold in all but a small snort, "Sorry, sweetheart, but I think that's the first time I've heard anyone say Goku had someone beat in the mental department. Don't tell that to Akira when you see him again."

"I don't mean he's dumber than Gandpa, but he…he looses control when he's really upset." Pan chewed the inside of her cheek, wondering if maybe she should tell her mother about what Akira did to the clone. In the end she decided against it, there was a more pleasant example anyway. "While he fought Ammit he sort of changed. He stopped caring about winning the battle and just wanted to cause Ammit as much pain as possible. When he fights his emotions can get the better of him and he can go overboard. Does that make sense?"

Videl nodded and was silent for a moment as she thought of how best to comfort her daughter. "So, you're not worried about him getting hurt, you're worried that he's emotionally unstable."

"No…yes…maybe, I don't know." Saying he was emotionally unstable made it sound like Akira was crazy. Pan was _pretty_ sure he wasn't crazy, she was just afraid he was being hurt in a way that he couldn't defend against.

Videl watched the confusion in her daughter's eyes as the demisaiyan tried to think of what she wanted to say. The older woman had to admit that she hadn't really considered what Akira must be going through emotionally. She had always unconsciously assumed that he would handle fights just like Goku, that he would have the ability to somewhat detach himself from the situation to do what was best for everyone. All of the young man's friends probably did it to some extent, but it wasn't really fair to him. He was after all technically only four and a half years old. Not that he acted like it, but he still wasn't someone who had trained as a warrior for most of his life as Goku was. Akira had really only fought three people in a true battle to the death; two of them had taken him to his physical limits and beyond. One of them had even killed him and another was his clone and the murderer of everyone he cared for.

"I just want to know that he's safe," Pan finally said. "I'm worried about him, he's been through something horrible and he doesn't have anyone to comfort him. Plus, I know him; he'll blame himself for what the clone did. He thinks he has to be this super hero like Grandpa, even though he hates being compared to him, but I just want Akira to be who he is, you know?"

Videl put her arms around her daughter and hugged her tightly, "Your father was the same way for a long time; I guess everyone tries to fill Goku's shoes in someway or other. But don't worry, Akira's strong, he'll get through this and then you can comfort him to your heart's content."

Pan held her mother tighter. "Thanks mom," she whispered, feeling somewhat better.

ooo

Akira stared up at the small sign that read "Sakeman's Winkle." He wasn't sure what a Winkle was, but it didn't seem like the kind of place that would sell fuel for a time machine, it looked like a junk shop. Still, it was his first lead since he started his search, so he had to at least see where it would take him. The young man opened the door and stepped inside.

The interior of the shop looked just as Akira had expected it to, the shelves where filled with a large assortment of odd shaped items whose purposes were unfathomable. The saiyan looked around, trying to find an owner or at least someone working amongst the piles of junk.

"Uh, hello?" he called out.

"Ah, a customer! Where are you?" a loud, jolly voice called out.

"Um, near the door…I think," Akira replied.

There was a moment of silence and then the young saiyan's ears picked up the sounds of movement coming towards him. A few seconds later a tall, purple skinned alien with impressively large muscles stepped out from amongst the overflowing shelves.

"Hello young man, my name is Sakeman; I'm the proprietor of this fine store you find yourself in. Now, how may I be of assistance to you today?" the alien asked with a broad smile.

"I'm looking for some…special fuel. I was told you might be able to help me."

"Well, I don't usually carry fuel; that's something that is generally sold in the space port. However, I have yet to have an unsatisfied customer, so I'll see what I can do."

Akira handed over the data pad and waited as patiently as he could while Sakeman studied it and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. After a moment, the alien smiled and handed the pad back to Akira.

"I'm afraid I don't have anything that could produce this kind of power," Sakeman said. "Not many ships require anything like it and it would be quite expensive to produce."

The way Sakeman said that made Akira think that there was a 'but' coming. When it didn't come, the saiyan tried prompting the alien. "But…"

Sakeman's smile grew larger, "But I know someone who may be able to supply what you are looking for. It won't be cheap though."

Akira felt a desperate hope well up inside his chest. This was his chance, he just had to find this person, get the fuel and revive his friends. He'd almost given up hope, but now everything he wanted seemed to be almost with in his grasp.

"Please," he said, "tell me where I can find this person."

"Before I do that, there is the question of my fee," there was a greedy look in Sakeman's eyes.

"What fee?"

"Nothing is free my young friend, this information is no exception."

Akira suddenly felt a little nervous, but he'd come this far, he couldn't turn back now. "What do you want?"

"I only wish to know the answer to a question, nothing more." Akira nodded slightly, waiting for Sakeman to ask his question. "I noticed the tail wrapped around your waste, what I'm wondering is, are you a member of the saiyan race?"

Nervousness became confusion as Akira's eyes narrowed slightly. "Why do you want to know whether or not I'm a saiyan?"

"I deal not only in goods, but also in information. Many say that the saiyans are extinct, though there are rumors that a few remain on some backwater planet. There are historians who would pay a fair price for information concerning the survival of such a famous race."

Akira was not dumb; he didn't think this had anything to do with any historians. However, he needed the information and Sakeman didn't seem like the kind of person who would be easily intimidated. Plus, by not answering, he was essentially telling Sakeman what he wanted to know without getting anything out of it.

"Yeah, I'm a saiyan," he said with a sigh. "Now, who is this guy and how can I find him?"

ooo

Vegeta sat down in the grass and took a deep breath, his trademark smirk firmly in place after the thrashing he'd just given his son and Gohan in their last sparring session. He relaxed for a moment, then crossed his legs and closed his eyes as he began to meditate.

As the adrenaline from his fight slowly filtered out of his system, his mind began to clear and his thoughts turned back to his conversation with the clone after Pan and the others had left.

"_Okay, let's hear it. What does your creator have to do with Arlea?" Vegeta asked as soon as Pan and the other Z Fighters were out of ear shot. The saiyan was now the only one still standing in front of the clone's cell._

"_He's the last of the arleans."_

"_That's impossible. The arleans are all dead, I destroyed them all when I blew up their planet," Vegeta quickly replied. He wasn't exactly proud of what he'd done, there certainly hadn't been any honor in destroying the backwater planet filled with weaklings, but he was sure that they didn't possess space travel technology. There wasn't anyway any of them could have gotten off the planet even if they had some idea of what he was going to do once he got back into space._

"_Apparently you missed one. Kind of a costly mistake, don't you think?" the clone said with a smile._

_Vegeta scowled, his saiyan instincts crying out for him to destroy the fowl creature before him even though he knew the ki absorbing bars of the clone's cell would probably negate his attack anyway. More than that, he wanted information that only the clone could provide. If Akira was somehow able to revive any of them, they would need to know as much about their enemy as possible._

"_So, how did I miss this one?" he asked, forcing his voice to hide the agitation he was feeling. "The Arleans didn't exactly strike me as a space faring species."_

"_No…they weren't. But you weren't the first alien to come to Arlea. Shortly before you arrived, a group of slavers happened to stop by. The Alrean Royal Family had just been overthrown, the new "king" decided to use their timely arrival to dispose of some of the Royal Family's more vocal supporters. My master and his family paid the price for being on the wrong side."_

"_So there's more than one arlean out there?"_

_Now it was the clone's turn to scowl. "No, most did not survive the journey to the slaver's home world. The arleans may not have been a powerful race, but they were still proud, most would rather die than live as slaves. The slavers didn't care if the arleans lived or died, they were just looking for good slaves and many of the arleans would not have been good slaves."_

_Vegeta crossed his arms and smirked, "If they weren't strong enough to defeat their captors, they should have waited until they were in a more advantageous position."_

_The clone did not smile, but his face took on a very thoughtful look, "Interesting that you would say that. That is almost exactly what The Arlean told me he decided to do. He was complacent, planned out his escape for years while he learned how to use the technology of his slavers. Eventually he discovered that Alrea had been destroyed by you and his plan turned from escape to revenge. Then, when the time was right, he led a slave revolt and slaughtered those that had held him in bondage for so long."_

"_And then he came to Earth with some sort of cloning technology and had us all killed," Vegeta said with a wave of his hand. "I'm not looking for the guy's life story; I just wanted to know how he survived the planets destruction."_

_The clone shrugged, "I just thought you might be interested in what you and others like you created."_

"_So what is he planning on doing? I'm dead, the others are dead, only Akira is left and he's going to be almost impossible to find unless he lets himself be found. Is the Arlean just going to keep looking, or will he be satisfied with my death?"_

"_Oh, he'll keep looking, but he has other plans for Earth," the clone looked almost gleeful at the chance to rub his master's plans in Vegeta's face, knowing that the Saiyan Prince couldn't do anything about it. "He's going to rebuild the arlean race, just as you and Goku tried to rebuild the saiyan race._

"_I doubt many human women will find the bug all that appealing. He'll have to look for one that's blind and deaf if he plans on finding a mate on Earth," Vegeta said with a chuckle._

"_He won't be mating with a human, you idiot. There are other insectiod species compatible with arleans. As a matter of fact, he's already secured a few to help build New Arlea on Earth."_

"_Saying that he's 'secured' them doesn't exactly make them sound like willing participants in you friend's grand schemes."_

_The clone shrugged, "We both know that isn't how the universe works. Their wants or desires mean nothing unless they are strong enough or smart enough to make them happen."_

_Vegeta frowned, "Your master is nothing but a hypocrite then. He seeks revenge for all the people he claims were wronged by the saiyans, but he's going out and doing the same thing."_

"_The good of the many out weigh the good of the few," the Akira look-alike replied. "The saiyans have proven throughout their history that they were a danger to the rest of the universe. They had to be killed. But when you look at the recovery of a beautiful civilization, what do a few dozen lives mean in comparison with that?"_

"_And what of the humans living on Earth? Is their civilization going to be sacrificed as well?"_

"_The humans will be allowed to survive…so long as they accept the new leaders of their planet. If not, well, perhaps they'll learn the same lesson the Arlean learned when he supported the weaker side."_

_Vegeta quietly absorbed what the clone had said. Things were worst than he'd thought. Not only was the Arlean a murderer, but he was also insane enough to try and take over the Earth so he could repopulate it with some sort of arlean-hybrid. _

_The Saiyan Prince walked away from the clone without another word, wondering if Akira was aware of the Arlean's plans and if so, did he even care anymore?_

ooo

Akira was practically skipping with joy as he walked back towards the ship, a data pad with the coordinates of the planet where he might possibly be get a hold of the fuel he needed resting in his pocket. Sakeman had said this person was very rich and had been building a confederacy of planets over the last few years. With so many planets as part of his alliance, he would have access to thousands of scientists on hundreds of worlds. It was Akira's best chance.

He was almost half way back to the ship when he noticed the eight fairly high power levels following him. He'd been so excited about his first lead that he hadn't really been paying much attention to his surroundings, whoever it was could have been following him since the moment he left the shop.

Akira slowed down and then turned, not bothering to hide the fact that he knew he was being followed. The eight aliens immediately began pretending to look in store windows, but they were either really eager to catch him or really bad at being discreet, because even through the dark goggles they stood out quite clearly from the real shoppers. The young man watched them for a moment and then looked around for an alley in which he could take care of his little problem without drawing too much attention to himself. It only took a second to find one not too much farther down the street and he quickly headed for it.

The alley was perfect for his needs, it not only was wide enough to let him move around if he needed to, it also turned a corner a short ways in so that no one randomly passing by would be able to see any mess that he might leave should things become unpleasant. He stopped and waited for his followers to catch up with him. He didn't wait long.

"Hello saiyan," a familiar voice called out as seven large warriors (as Akira could now plainly see that they were) stepped around the corner and stood before him followed by the owner of the voice.

"What do you want with me Sakeman?" the young man asked as his dark eyes shifted back and forth behind his tinted goggles, sizing up his opponents. "I gave you what you wanted for your information."

"True, but now my friends and I would like to have the 10,000,000 credits the bounty on your head is going to bring us," Sakeman replied.

"Look, I think you may have me mistaken for someone else, I don't have any bounties on my head. If I was you, I'd turn around and walk away while you still can."

"That's a good one _boy_. We aren't leaving without our big payday. Heata is going to pay us handsomely for you," a different alien said with a chuckle.

"Heata?" Akira pulled out the data pad Sakeman had given him and glanced at the name of the rich person he was supposed to find. "The guy with the fuel?"

"That 'guy with the fuel' is one of the richest and most powerful beings in the universe. He was the cousin was the great Lord Frieza. With Frieza and King Kold dead, Heata is building a new empire now. Nothing stands in his way except the one thing that took down his relatives: the saiyans."

"Frieza, Frieza…where have I heard that before?" Akira rubbed his chin as he pretended to think out loud. "Little guy? Kind of gay sounding? Really weak…and dead? That Frieza?"

"Stop playing the fool, child," Sakeman said. "The bounty says dead or alive, if you don't struggle you won't die…yet."

Akira didn't reply. He simply stood perfectly still and waited for the bounty hunters to make the first move.

At a nod from his leader, one of the larger aliens stepped forward and reached for Akira's arm. The young man's hand shot forward, blue ki blazing around it, and buried itself in the alien's neck. There was a loud crack as the creature's vertebra was snapped and then a small shower of blood when Akira pulled his hand out. The bounty hunter fell without making another sound.

The others stared in disbelief for a moment and then turned to flee. Akira was already standing behind them.

"I'm afraid you're not going to leave here alive," the young man said with a smile. "You should have known better than to mess with a member of the race that so easily killed Frieza, now you pay the price for your stupidity."

"Please saiyan, it was just a misunderstanding…" Sakeman held his hands out in front of him as he backed away from the powerful warrior. "We don't want anything to do with you…please, just let us go in peace."

"Coward," Akira whispered menacingly as he advanced on them. "You had your chance to live; you should have walked away when you still could."

There were several screams of agony and then a smiling, blood-covered Akira stepped out of the alley filled with mangled corpses and headed back to his ship. Moments later the ship was heading back out to space and blasting towards its next destination.

ooo

The light at the back of the cave seeped forward just enough to for the young man walking through the tunnel to see where he was going. The hidden cave was quite large with several side tunnels that leading to rooms where supplies and other more valuable items were held. Some of those 'items' could be heard whimpering in fear as he passed their tunnel, but most were being held in suspended animation until they were needed.

As the cave opened up into a large, well lit cavern, the young man dropped to one knee and bowed before his master.

"Rise and report," the strange looking alien commanded.

"I'm afraid I have been unable to locate the last saiyan," the clone replied as he stood. "I have been to most of the major cities and have even fired energy attacks in the hope that he would emerge and challenge me, but he continues to cower in the shadows."

"It is no real concern now. Soon more of your brothers will be ready and then we shall reveal ourselves in full. When that time comes, he will come forward and then he will die and the saiyan race will finally be extinguished," the Arlean said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Now, go and fetch one of my females, when the humans either join us or fall before us, I want to have as many children ready to come forth as possible."

"Of course Master," the clone said as he bowed and then exited the room.

The insectiod watched him go for a moment and then walked over to a side room where an identical young man stood guarding a door. The second clone opened the door as his master approached and then followed him inside, ready to do anything the Arlean requested.

At the center of the room were five tall cylinders filled with a blue-green fluid; inside each tank was a child with a brown tail wrapped around him as he bobbed up and down. A small piece of metal could just barely be seen behind the boy's ear when his hair floated in a certain direction.

The Arlean peered into one of the cylinders and smiled, in a less than a month he would add five more monkeys to his army. Then it wouldn't matter who tried to stand against him, his saiyan slaves would make him invincible.

It had been so simple, looking back on it. By implanting the slave device before the clones became mature, the Arlean was able to bind them to his will so completely early on that they quickly came to the point where they would follow his orders even without the machine to control them. They became willing slaves.

They were so completely his that it was hard to remember that they were still saiyans, at least physically. Originally he'd planned on destroying them as soon as the last of the saiyans was killed, but now he thought he might keep them. After all, with so many powerful bodyguards that would do anything for him, he might even be able to expand his plans for New Arlea to other planets.

"'The Arlean Empire,' I like the sound of that," he said quietly to himself. It was almost within his grasp. In the large main room sounds of struggling and sobbing could be heard. The Arlean licked his lips lustfully.

First things first.

o

o

A/N: The name of the planet comes from Pitch Black (or the Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black as it says on the DVD now), it was the intended destination of the ship Riddick was being transported on before it crashed. If anyone is wondering, "Winkle" is African (according to a website I found) for "shop."

A/N: For some reason this chapter was a bit longer than a lot of my other chapters, I guess it's mostly because I drew up an outline of things I felt needed to happen in this chapter, but didn't realize how much writing it would actually take to put them all in. Still, I don't think I've had anyone ever complain about a long chapter and I kind of doubt I will this time either. Anyway, feel free to review and let me know what you thought of it, I kind of had mixed feelings, but hopefully you all liked it.

Courtney: Yeah, I'm not much of a Giru fan either, which is why he hasn't said a word in any of the chapters yet. I fear that I may eventually have to give him some dialog, but I'm doing my best to just write around it. As for whether or not the people in Paradise know about Akira's innocence, I guess I never addressed that, but it would be safe to assume that the Z Fighters wouldn't leave them in the dark.

TheTiny: I thought it would have been a pretty funny conversation too, but when I tried to write it out, it never came out as funny as it should have been so I side stepped the whole thing and just stuck her on the plane. Oh well, I guess your imagination will have to fill in the blanks.

Nasuren: I'm not sure what you meant about "trunks' time machine." However, here is my view on the whole time machine thing and maybe it will help you: Basically it seems to me that every time someone goes back, they create a new timeline. In DBZ there are at least three timelines that I know of, the first and second are (of course) the timeline that the show takes place in and Mirai Trunks' timeline, but there is also a third timeline in which Mirai Trunks was not as powerful and was killed by Cell (so he could take the time machine back). I suppose it could even be argued that there is a fourth timeline in which the Z Fighters defeat the androids but don't have to fight a Cell from the future (with the help of the Trunks that is killed by Cell), as Trunks was going back to tell his friends from the past that he'd also defeated the androids in his time but didn't seem to have any idea who Cell was (this was from a brief clip when Cell is explaining his origins). Personally I think there are some parts of the DBZ 'theory' on time travel that don't make a lot of sense, but as any time travel in this story will be fairly straight forward; it shouldn't cause me any issues. Just so you know, Akira will be going back and everything will have played out exactly as it did in his timeline up until he arrives, obviously after that there will be some changes. I hope this long winded and somewhat confusing response helps...now that I've started thinking about it, I've decided that I really hate time travel, it makes my head hurt.

Toni the Mink: Time will tell what Akira ends up doing (though I agree that snatching himself a namek could make things longer and more complicated). I laughed when I read your review, not just because a lot of it was funny (I AM avoiding giving Giru dialog cause it's a pain in the ass), but also because you mentioned a couple of things that are most likely going to occur later on down the road. Apparently I'm not very good at writing surprises or twists since you and several other reviewers are always figuring things out quite quickly. Well, hopefully in the end you'll still be a bit surprised (like Krillin killing Ammit, which was one of my better twists I think). Thanks for the 'highly recommends,' now go finish writing The Atalantan Games!

Draco the Destroyer: I wasn't laughing at your review...I was laughing with it. Okay, actually I was laughing (perhaps chuckling would be more accurate) at it, but only because you were wondering if Akira would be able to repent for his sins (breaking Melvin's hand, beating up some guards, and going a little overboard against the clone) and I know that when all is said and done those things will be...well, you'll see. Anyway, as far as King Kai contacting Akira is concerned, I'm of the opinion that he has to be able to 'sense' the person to contact them. I mean, the universe is a pretty big place so I find it hard to believe that King Kai can contact anyone he wants anytime he wants (plus Akira could just ignore him the way Goku did when he was fighting Frieza). I guess King Kai did contact large groups of people, but I think that would be easier than finding one individual person out of the billions and billions of people that are in the universe. However, as always, if you can think of a scene that proves King Kai can find people more easily, then by all means let me know and I'll wrack my brain for a better reason.


	37. Do Anything

**Chapter 37: Do Anything**

o

Akira hated his life. More than that he hated whatever it was that guided the events in the universe. He didn't know if it was just fate or some sort of god that existed above the kais, but whatever it was, it had obviously had it in for him. Every time anything seemed to start going right for him, something came in and screwed it all up. Life was good on Earth, but then the nightmares had come. After that he'd hidden away in fear while all of his friends had been slaughtered by a person they thought was him; he'd even been the one that weakened Trunks and Goten enough for the clone to kill them. So he'd gone to get Bulma's time machine, thinking he could fix things quickly, but it didn't have the fuel he'd needed. He'd finally learned of someone who might have the fuel, but that person had placed a bounty on the head of any saiyan that could be found; plus, when the navicomputer computed the travel time to the new coordinates, it had come out at nearly a year.

The planet Sakeman had claimed Heata was on was practically on the other side of the galaxy!

Hot tears ran down Akira's face. He'd failed again. By the time he got his hands on the fuel, the one year would be up. He would not be able to revive Pan or the others.

He wanted to die. Just to open up the door on the side of the ship and walk out into the cold, pressureless void of space. His blood would vaporize in his veins, his body would freeze, and he would suffocate. Probably not the most pleasant way to go, but it would get him where he wanted to be: with Pan.

But did he deserve that? He wasn't even sure where King Yemma would send him (he had done some pretty bad things lately), but his role in the battle with Ammit would probably be enough for him to keep his body get a place on the Great Kai Planet. Still, he wasn't sure he could even look her in the eye knowing what a coward and a failure he'd been. Could he really just go see her and act like nothing had happened in the last several months? Pretend that he wasn't responsible for her death? That he hadn't failed to revive her? That he had just quit because things seemed hard?

No, he couldn't do that.

He would go on living if for no other reason than to punish himself everyday for his failure. He would still get the fuel and go into the past with the feint hope that the dragon could still revive his friends or at least tell him if there was another way to bring them back. He would kill the Arlean in the most painful way he could think of and if anyone got in his way, they would barely have a chance to blink before they were standing before King Yemma.

Akira sighed and leaned his head back against the gravity room wall, the tears still trickling down his face though their pace had slowed.

_'I'd give anything for just one more day with her,'_ he thought sadly. _'Just to know she was alive, even if I couldn't be there with her...I'd do anything for that.'_

He took a deep breath and climbed to his feet. Now that he knew he was going to be dealing with a member of Frieza's family, there was something very, very unpleasant that he had to take care of.

Something along the lines of 'doing anything.'

ooo

Most of the humans as well as Goten and Trunks had gotten bored with training nonstop and had wandered off to visit with some of the fighters from the other quadrants of the universe. Vegeta, Gohan, and Piccolo, however, were still going strong; driving each other to higher and higher power levels as they tirelessly trained day in and day out.

Usually King Kai sat back and watched or gloated about their incredible fighting abilities to the other kais. Today, however, he was simply staring off into space, completely ignoring those around him.

Gohan was the first to notice the change in King Kai and he called a halt to the training, but not before Piccolo decked him while he wasn't paying attention. The three warriors landed and walked over to the martial arts master.

"What's up King Kai?" Gohan asked as he gingerly rubbed the spot on his chin where Piccolo's fist had slammed into him.

"There's something weird going on," the kai said, his face scrunched up in concentration.

"Is it Akira?" Piccolo asked.

"Yes and no."

"What the hell kind of answer is that?" Vegeta demanded, earning himself a glare from King Kai. "Quit playing games and tell us what's happening?"

"I've been sensing him in several different places. One moment he'll be on earth, the next he'll be in the middle of space or on a distant planet, and then he'll be in both places at the same time."

"Another clone?" Gohan asked with a hint of fear in his voice. How many of these things were there?

"I'd say the word to use is 'clones,'" King Kai replied.

ooo

Akira looked in the mirror and sighed sadly at the sight of his tail. The young saiyan was standing completely naked in what he assumed was supposed to be some sort of sick bay. It was the room that held all of the rejuvenation tanks, but it also had a large, white table and an assortment of tools for surgery.

Akira had known Bulma for several years now and he respected her very much, but the thought of her performing surgery was a little frightening. He guessed there were some situations where it would be good to have a room for surgery, he just couldn't think of any. Until now.

The young man held his tail in his hand and sighed again.

"We had some good memories, buddy, but I can't have everyone that sees you knowing that I'm a saiyan." He really hated the idea of what he was going to do, but after hearing about the bounty that had been put out for all saiyans by the same person that possibly had access to the fuel Akira needed. He couldn't exactly expect any sort of cooperation if he was in a fight to the death before he even opened his mouth.

The saiyan took a deep breath and picked up a scalpel.

_Akira flew over to Orange Star High school to get Pan as soon as his own school let him out. She'd asked the night before if he could help her study for her history class and, in a rush of hormones, he'd agreed, thinking that 'study for history' was code for something else._

_After all, who studies for history?_

_He'd seen his mistake as soon as she told him they could study at her house and her mom would feed them an after school snack and even dinner if it took that long. So they probably wouldn't be doing any of the things his mind continuously pictured, but he couldn't really complain since he was getting to spend time with Miss Son._

_Videl and Chi-chi's cooking would be a nice bonus as well._

_"I'm home mom," Pan announced as soon as she stepped inside. The house was surprisingly quiet._

_"Mom?" Pan called out again, but still there was no answer. The young woman looked around in confusion until she spotted a note on the refrigerator._

Pan,

Your grandma and I realized that we didn't have enough food to cook with if you, your father, AND Akira were planning on having dinner here, so we went to get groceries. We may be awhile, but there should be enough snacks in the fridge to tide you over until we get back. Be on your 'best' behavior since it will just be you and Akira...all alone. Don't do anything Bra wouldn't do. Actually, don't do a lot of things Bra would do! I want a Son-in-law before I get any grandbabies.

Love you,

Mom

_Pan's face turned red as she read the note. Did her mom really think she would do __**that **__with Akira? It was probably just a jock, but if Chi-chi was around then the two of them had probably been conspiring on how best to get her relationship with Akira out in the open. They'd been trying to force the young couple to 'make it official' since about a week after Ammit was defeated._

_The young saiyan opened the refrigerator and pulled out some snacks, noting that there was quite a bit of food in there and probably more in the one in Chi-chi's house. She scowled as she sat down at the table with Akira. _

_This was a set up._

_She glanced at the young man out of the corner of her eye as he began munching on the sandwiches her mother had left. Pan couldn't deny that she liked him a whole lot, probably even loved him, but it was way way way to early in their relationship for things to be taken to __**that**__ level. They hadn't even known each other for a whole year yet and he'd been dead for a good chunk of that time. She couldn't deny that she thought about those things once in a while, maybe even more than that now that she and Akira were sort of dating, but she wasn't Bulma, or Bra, or even Zori. She could wait until she was married...probably._

_"So," Akira said as he came up for air from the dwindling stack of sandwiches, "What do you need to study?"_

_Pan blinked and focused her eyes on him, she'd been so lost in thought that she hadn't really heard what he asked. "Uh...huh?"_

_The young man started laughing, "Are you awake? Maybe you should take a nap before we start, I'd be happy to take you to bed." He stopped laughing instantly and his eyes widened in horror, "Uh, I...I mean I'll take you'up' tobed...um, no, I mean..." his voice trailed off, which was probably a good thing._

_Pan arched an eyebrow and gave him her best 'stern' glare, "So you want me in bed?"_

_"No!I mean, Yes! I mean...That's not what I meant!" He looked truly frightened now._

_"Oh...that's too bad." She stood and walked back towards the living room...and the stairs to the bedrooms, calling over her shoulder. "Oh well, your loss."_

_Akira's fear turned to confusion. Did Pan say what he thought she just said? Dozens of scenarios were suddenly playing out before his eyes, many of them not suitable for children._

_Then he heard the giggling start in the other room._

_He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. "That was really mean," hegrumbled as he grabbed one final sandwich, stuffed it in his mouth, and then headed out of the kitchen._

_"Hey, it's not my fault your mind is in the gutter," she retorted through her giggles as she got her books out of her backpack._

_"Actually, I kind of think it is."_

_She smiled and looked back at him, intending to tease him a little more, but just as she did his tail wrapped around her waist, pulling her close as his lips pressed against hers and his arms encircled her. The two stayed like that for a long time, enjoying the wonderful passion of their kiss, but eventually they had to come up for air._

_"Well, you certainly know how to make a girl feel appreciated," Pan said breathlessly. She glanced down at his tail, still wrapped around her and keeping her pressed against him. "I like this," she said as she ran her fingers along the furry appendage. _

_A gasp from Akira caused her to look up just in time to see his eyes began to roll back in his head and goofy expression cross his face, it looked like...bliss. It took a moment for her to understand that he was reacting to her gentle petting of his tail; she smiled and did it again._

_This time instead of a gasp, there was a strange noise in Akira's chest and throat. The noise was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. She pet his tail again and then smiled as she listened carefully._

_Akira was purring._

_She stopped petting him and started laughing. Akira's eyes opened and he swayed slightly, apparently whatever sensation it was that he'd been feeling made him a bit lightheaded._

_"Why are you laughing?" he asked in confusion when he finally regained his balance._

_"You were purring!"_

_Akira looked rather offended, "I do not purr."_

_Pan ran her fingers along his tail again and he instantly stiffened and let out another long purr._

_"Stop that!" he cried when he regained control of his body. His tail released her and wrapped itself around his own waist once again._

_"Oh, come on," Pan begged with a slight giggle, "That's the cutest thing I've ever seen! Just do it one more time. Please?"_

_"No," Akira replied as he crossed his arms and scowled, disgusted with his inability to control his own body, "I am a saiyan warrior and one of the strongest fighters on the planet, I DO NOT purr!"_

_Pan changed tactics. "Please?" she asked in what she hoped was a slightly seductive voice, "For me?" She closed the gap between them once again and then leaned forward as she stood on her tip-toes so she was almost looking into his eyes and kissed him._

_Akira smiled as he enjoyed her attempts to persuade him and then pulled away just slightly. Not enough to put himself out of reach of her kisses, but enough so he could talk. "You can't just manipulate me with kisses, you know."_

_"Are you sure?" she whispered as she put her arms around his neck and pulled him back towards her._

_Akira didn't put up much of a struggle. Soon his arms had uncrossed and found their way around her and his tail had slipped around her waist once again._

_"Can I?" she whispered. "Please?"_

_He sighed in resignation, "Alright, fine. Just don't make too much of a hab--"_

_"We're home!" Videl called out as she and Chi-chi stepped through the door._

_Pan had just started to run her fingers along Akira's tail again when her mother had opened the door. She tried to leap away from him, but his tail was still wrapped around her waist and his mind was temporarily frozen from her touch. She didn't get very far._

_Videl nearly died laughing at the sight. Her daughter and the man who was "not" her boyfriend were standing rather intimately close to each other,with very guilty looks on their faces. She'dcaught them, just like she and Chi-chi had planned._

_She glanced ather mother-in-law,who looked equallyentertained, and smiled, "You were right, I guess that means I have to do the dishes tonight."_

_The two teenagers prayed for death. Not only had they been caught in a rather embarrassing possition, but Pan's mother and grandmother had been placing bets on whether or not she'd be kissing Akira when the older women returned from their 'shopping.' In their humiliation, neither teen noticed that Akira's tail was still wrapped around Pan's waist._

_Somehow it just felt "right" where it was._

If it hadn't been happening to him, Akira probably would have laughed at the thought of all of the nerve endings in someone's butt being lit on fire. However, it was happening to him, and it wasn't very funny. The blade passed through his tail, separating it from the rest of his body. There was a spray of blood and a small thump as the severed appendage hit the floor and began to twitch.

Akira clamped his mouth shut and partially succeeded in swallowing his cry of pain. Tears weld up in his eyes as he opened his mouth and let out a long string of curses.

If Heata didn't have the fuel, Akira would probably have to kill him just for this.

ooo

"I think the Akira that I've felt in space is the real Akira," King Kai said as he compared the sensations he'd been getting over the last few days and hours, "but there have been times where I've felt more than one Akira on Earth."

"How many?" Vegeta asked.

"Only two as far as I can tell."

"And you're sure the one you feel traveling in space is the real Akira?" Piccolo asked.

"Well, not entirely sure," King Kai answered truthfully, "But it makes more sense than him being on Earth and not attacking the new clone I've felt. I've even tried asking him if he's the real deal, but he ignores me and suppresses his life force until I lose track of him again. It's very annoying."

"So why do you look worried?" Gohan asked.

King Kai sighed and looked around to make sure none of the others were close by, "Well for starters, why isn't Akira on Earth fighting the clones? And more than that, during one of the times I felt his power he was fighting…the way he did against his clone."

There was silence for a moment and then Vegeta spoke up.

"He isn't on Earth because he either doesn't know about the other clones, or simply doesn't care," the Saiyan Prince said, "He's focused on reviving us, nothing else matters to him."

"I know," King Kai said in a quiet voice, "that's what has me so worried."

ooo

Akira sat gingerly on a pillow; bandages and an ice pack strapped firmly to his butt, and tried to meditate. As soon as the pain and swelling went down a little, he planned on learning how to balance with no tail so he could get back to training. He wasn't sure if he would still be able to transform into the higher forms of Super Saiyan without the tail, but since Vegeta, Trunks, and Goten had all been able to hit Super Saiyan Four (albeit with help) there was still some hope for him.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate. Soon, the world around him seemed to fade away as he slipped deeper and deeper into his own mind.

"Akira!"

The young man looked around in confusion, for some reason he wasn't on his ship anymore.

"Akira!"

In fact, he wasn't sure where he was. Was this a dream? Was he dead?

For a moment he let himself hope that it was the second option, but then he remembered that he'd been dead before and it looked nothing like this.

"Akira, wait up!"

Akira hadn't realized he was moving until that moment, but when he looked down, he noticed that he was in fact walking. He stopped and looked around again, trying to find the owner of the voice that kept calling out to him.

"Whoa, thanks for stopping, I didn't think I'd ever find you in all this," the voice called out behind him.

Akira turned and found himself eye to eye with another young man. The stranger looked to be about the saiyan's age, perhaps a little younger, with wild, black hair that spiked out in a very familiar fashion. He looked like a grown up version of Kumo, but with black hair.

"Do I know you?" Akira asked in confusion, the young man looked very familiar, but Akira couldn't quite put his finger on where he knew him from.

"Not exactly, but we have some mutual friends," the dark haired teenager replied. "And I'm sure you've seen some pictures of me at Pan's house."

It took a second, but then things clicked. "Goku?"

The stranger smiled happily, "Nice to meet you."

"You're younger than I thought you'd be," Akira said, still feeling a bit confused.

"Yeah, I guess getting turned into an eleven year old will do that to you."

"Where are we?" Akira looked around at the dark fog once again.

"To be honest, I've never been here before," Goku said with a chuckle as he scratched the back of his head.

The two stared at each other for a moment in silence. Akira felt really uncomfortable. It wasn't that he necessarily disliked Goku, after all they had technically only just met, but, given the two's rather strange connection and Akira's thoughts on what that said about him, he'd prefer to never have met the legendary warrior.

"Well," Akira said, shuffling his feet, "it was nice to meet you, I guess, but if we're just going to sit here, I should probably get going."

"I think maybe we should talk first," Goku replied with a goofy smile, "Isn't there anything you want to talk about?"

Akira didn't remember Pan describing Goku as being this annoying or this pushy. "Not really."

He turned to leave, but a powerful hand grabbed hold of his arm and held him where he was. Akira looked down at Goku's hand and then back into the man's dark eyes. "Let go of me, before you get hurt," he said in a threatening voice, "We don't have anything to talk about."

Goku smiled, and then began chuckling, and finally broke out into laughter, "Sorry Akira, I know you've gotten strong, but you wouldn't stand a chance."

The legendary warrior's words enraged Akira. "Let's find out!" he yelled as his power shot straight to his max. Blonde fur covered his body, his tail reappeared and his hair lengthened until it fell about his shoulders, becoming golden with red tips. "Maybe it's time to see if the puppet has surpassed the puppet master!"

Goku's face became very serious, "You aren't a puppet Akira and you never have been. That's not why I convinced the dragon to create you."

Akira didn't rise to the bait of asking about his creation, this was his chance to prove once and for all that he was really in control of his own life and that he was no longer just a pseudo-Goku. His lips pulled back into a sneer, "Oh yeah? Did you just want some part of you to keep being the hero while you were off playing with the dragon? Or maybe you just thought it would be funny for me to watch everyone I ever cared about die all around me?" He charged forward, his fist raised and ready to destroy his enemy. "Well, I'm not laughing!" he screamed as his fist passed through Goku's face.

Akira blinked in shock, he hadn't even touched the saiyan from the past and Goku hadn't even bothered to transform. It was impossible!

"Calm down Akira, we don't need to fight," Goku called out from within the mist.

Akira locked on to the voice and fired a powerful ki beam in its direction. The beam lit up the area around him as it passed through the mist and then exploded in the distance, but the angry saiyan didn't know if it had hit its target.

"You're just wasting your energy," Goku said as he rematerialized next to Akira. "This is a pointless battle that you can't win."

Akira's fists and feet lashed out as he tried to land a blow on the ever calm and collected Goku, but the legendary saiyan dodged them all with ease.

After what seemed like hours, Akira fell to his knees as sweat rolled down his face and splashed on the shapeless ground. "So I am weaker, he said as he sucked air into his lungs, "All of this strength and I'm nothing but a joke in comparison with you. A cheap imitation."

Goku knelt next to the broken young man and placed his hand upon Akira's shoulder, "This had nothing to do with your physical strength, we're probably a pretty even match in that department. But almost everything you see here came out of your own head and, deep down, you don't really think you can beat me, so your mind won't let you."

Akira thought about it for a second and then asked, "If this is all in my head, why are you here? I try not to think about you if I can help it."

Goku smiled, "I said almost everything. And I'm here because you're in trouble."

"Oh yeah? Where were you when my friends were getting killed?"

Something in Goku's face changed, it seemed to grow older, more mature, but at the same time looked just as youthful as it had when he first stepped out of the mist. "They were my friends too, but this goes beyond them."

"Maybe for you, but for me, nothing goes beyond them," Akira spat, "Nothing is more important than them."

"I know, that's why I'm here. You are getting very close to a darkness you don't want to touch. If you keep going the way you are, millions of people could suffer because of it."

Akira looked Goku right in the eyes and said something he'd started believing the moment he had realized what had truly been happening on Earth.

"I don't care. 'Darkness,' 'Light,' 'Good,' Evil,' those are just meaningless words. The only thing I care about is bringing back my friends and family and then slaughtering the bastard that killed them; those are the only things that mean anything to me." His eyes hardened, "I'd sacrifice the entire galaxy without a second thought if that's what it took to reach my goal."

Goku closed his eyes and bowed his head sadly at the words, "Then there is no turning back for you. The young man called Akira is dead, because you are someone else."

Akira opened his mouth to disagree, but stopped before any words came out. For a long moment he was silent while he thought and then he said, "You're right, he _is_ dead. After what I've been through, I doubt I could ever become him again." A twisted smile crossed his face, "Perhaps I should call myself Kanata Akira."

"Kanata?" Goku looked confused, "'The Other'?"

"It's got a nice ring to it, don't you think? The Other Akira."

"It doesn't have to be this way, you know," Goku said quietly, almost pleadingly, "You could still turn back; use your life to help those that can still be saved."

"I am going to help those that can still be saved; I might still be able to bring them back."

"You're being a fool. You're going to go make a deal with Frieza's cousin. Do you really think he'll just hand over something as rare as what you're looking for?"

"No, but I'll get it regardless and then I'll make things the way they were supposed to be."

"So be it," Goku said with a sad shake of his head. He turned and walked into the mist without another word.

Akira's eyes snapped open. He was back inside the ship and more resolved than ever to see things through until the end.

To hell with the consequences.

o

o

**A/N:** This whole chapter was kind of random, mostly just an excuse to put in the flashback scene and because of that I didn't really like much of it except the flashback. The scene with Goku has been floating around in my head for a while, but I wasn't sure if I was going to write it until I started working on this chapter. I'm not sure if it came out right, but I'm satisfied with it enough to post it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter; Akira meets Heata in the next one, which is mostly done and should be out fairly soon.

Draco the Destroyer: I'm glad you liked the last chapter; I think I liked it too for the most part. As for who Akira will be fighting in the end…hmmm, I guess I should start thinking about figuring that out. Just kidding, that's one of the few parts of the story that I know for sure. By the way, I didn't think you were trying to be mean in your review, I just assumed (correctly I hope) that you were confused about a response.

DynastyDrummer: I'm not really sure if I'll give the Arlean a real name or not. If I just leave him like this, I don't have to do any more thinking about an appropriate name for him, but at the same time, it kind of seems like he should have a name. If he gets one it won't be until much closer to the end.

Adum I. Smart: I didn't exactly say when the clone finally died (there was only about a second and a half between him being intact and being torn to shreds), but he was fairly alive when Akira started opening him up, so I figured with the parts he didn't know he could guess closely enough to paint a rosy picture for Pan and the others.

Toni the Mink: Kuriza, huh? I don't know if I'd call him an official character (since Neko Majin Z is a spoof of DBZ), but according to a website I found, he is an unlockable character in Budokai 2. Since he doesn't have a name that follows his family tradition, I don't think I would have used him even if I knew about him. I debated for a while about using 'Heata,' but after thinking up kind of a funny scene explaining a bit of his past I decided to just go with it.

Nasuren: Mirai Trunks warned everyone about Brolly? I'm guessing that was in one of the movies that I haven't seen. As for making the wish in a different timeline verses Akira's timeline, I don't recall anything that says the dragon wouldn't be powerful enough to grant wishes concerning another timeline. Since he can restore planets and entire populations, it seems like he shouldn't have any problem crossing dimensional boundaries either.

Midnight46: Hey, you don't ever need to apologize for long reviews (just like I probably don't need to apologize for long chapters). As for the Arlean's plans for rebuilding his species, the clone told Vegeta that there were other insectiod races that could be 'used' (after Vegeta said he didn't think many human women would be interested).

Everyone Else: Thanks for all the reviews (I'm almost to 400)!


	38. Another Changeling

**Chapter 38: Another Changeling**

o

**A/N:** A special treat since I just hit 400 reviews! My second update of the night. If I hit 500 reviews with out someone just spamming me, I'll update again tonight, but as I don't see that happening (though it would be really really cool) the next chapter probably won't come until Friday or Saturday.

o

Several large guards with surly expressions on their faces eyed Akira menacingly as he waited to hear if he would be permitted to come before Heata and make his request. Behind the guards was a big door and beyond that the young man could feel an enormous power level.

Well, enormous in comparison with those around it. Tien could probably give the guy a run for his money and he wasn't even in his prime any more.

'_Actually,'_ Akira thought bitterly, _'Tien isn't even alive anymore.'_ He quickly pushed away the thought and the emotions that came with it. He couldn't think about that, not now.

According to Vegeta, Frieza had several different transformations that each yielded new levels of power. So it was possible that Frieza's cousin was just in his base form; still, Akira couldn't imagine that Heata was going to be anything close to a challenge when he was maxed out.

A guard wearing a nicer uniform than that of his fellow guards turned slightly to the side as someone spoke through the scouter that covered his left ear and one of his eyes.

"Yes sire…No, his power level is only 25…No, he just says he wants to talk to you about making a purchase, but won't say what," Akira heard the guard say.

When he'd first arrived the guards had questioned him about his reason for wanting to talk to Heata, but he'd refused to say anything more than that he was looking to buy something special. When they told him they couldn't let him in unless he told them exactly what he wanted, he'd asked if they really thought he was powerful enough to harm Heata, and if so, how exactly did they think they were going to stop him. The truth was he just didn't care to hear 'no' from some flunky that didn't want his boss being bothered; he wanted to hear it from the guy in charge.

"Alright kid, time to get out of here," the guard said as he apparently finished the conversation. "Heata's busy; he doesn't have time to deal with peasants."

"Well, he's going to see me," the young saiyan replied with an even voice, he folded his arms across his chest and scowled fiercely at the guard.

The alien rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm sure you're a tough guy where ever you're from, but I'm the captain of Heata's Royal Guard, my power level is almost a thousand times higher than yours. Leave while you can."

"25,000 huh?" Akira whistled, "That _is_ pretty high. I bet your one of the strongest fighters around, aren't you?"

The captain of the guards looked smug, but also confused; apparently when he announced his power level it usually caused those around him to tremble with fear or awe. Akira looked neither afraid nor awed.

"I'm one of the strongest, yes. Only the commanders in charge of the elite purging units have higher power levels…and Heata himself, of course."

"Well, it's quite an accomplishment. I know a friend of mine was pretty proud when his two year old son reached that level," a cocky smile spread across Akira's face, "I wouldn't know though…I've never been that weak."

The guard's face contorted in fury for a moment and then he calmed himself and burst into laughter. "That's a good one! You really are a wise ass…" his face grew very serious, "now get out of here before I blast you."

Two guards grabbed Akira by the arms and tried to drag him out of the palace, he didn't move an inch.

"Like I said, I'm not leaving until I've spoken with Heata. Now you can either tell him I'm coming or I can kill you along with anyone else that tries to touch me and then I'll just go find him myself."

Akira's hands shot out and grabbed a hold of the necks of the two guards that were still trying to move him. Both immediately released their grip on him and began clawing at his hands, trying to restore the flow of oxygen into their lungs. The young man stared menacingly into the eyes of the guard captain as he slowly crushed the two aliens' windpipes. With a smile, he brought his arms together; driving the two guards' heads into each other with a wet splattering sound and then dropping the corpses on the ground.

Akira began walking towards the door, the rest of the guards in the room looked wide eyed at their captain, hoping he would give them some sort of direction on what they should do with the powerful warrior. The really had no desire to fight the young man now that he had shown himself to be more than just a simple, weak peasant, but if he entered Heata's thrown room without being invited, they would all be executed.

Their leader moved quickly and placed himself between Akira and the door. "You may not enter," he said sternly as he dropped into his fighting stance. "You'll find that I am not as weak as the ones you just killed."

Akira didn't respond, he simply slammed his elbow into the alien's stomach and then grabbed him by the arm and threw him through the large door, creating a nice sized opening for himself in the process. The captain of the guard landed in a heap at the feet of a small alien with black horns that Akira instantly recognized as a relative of Frieza's. Both had the same markings on their skin, though Frieza's had been purple where this one was red.

"Really Captain Chegaoo, I'm surprised at you," the alien said to the fallen guard in a soft, rich voice. He didn't seem to notice or at least didn't mind that the large alien was more or less unconscious and bleeding heavily. "I had thought that you were more powerful than to be outdone by such a seemingly insignificant opponent. However, perhaps appearances are deceiving in this case." He eyed Akira lazily for a moment, "Yes, he has the look of a warrior. No doubt you were relying on the scouter and this young man can hide his true power level, a foolish mistake, but an understandable one. That is a rare skill, after all, especially in one so young." He motioned to a guard standing at the door and the almost-human looking man quickly ran in, retrieved his barely conscious captain, and then hurried out again.

Akira watched the ruler carefully, Heata seemed very different from his cousin, but the saiyan could see the same cold ruthlessness lying just under the relaxed exterior.

"So, tell me my…" Heata's voice trailed off as he waited for Akira to give him a name.

"Kanata," the young man said, deciding on a whim to use the name he'd spitefully given himself during his conversation with Goku.

"Very well, what is it that brings you here today, Kanata?" the changeling asked good-naturedly as soon as Chegaoo was no longer lying a pool of blood at his feet. "My guards tell me that you refused to relate your business to any but me. I, however, am a busy man, so please be brief."

"I need a special fuel and was told that you might have it," Akira replied. He handed the data pad with the fuel information on it over to Heata who passed it without looking to a small, weak-looking alien standing next to the thrown. The alien, apparently some kind of advisor, scanned the pad for a moment and then whispered something in his boss's ear before returning the pad to Akira.

"My assistant tells me that we have the ability to produce something that could meet your needs, however it is quite expensive and rather impractical which is why we rely on cheaper fuels to power our ships," Heata explained. "Regardless, I am willing to help you, but it will not be cheap."

This was the part Akira was dreading. Payment. He'd learned during his travels that Earth money was more or less worthless and even if it wasn't he didn't exactly want to go around broadcasting where he was from, especially not to someone who most likely knew where his cousin and uncle had met their fates at the hands of a saiyan.

"What do you want for this fuel?" he asked.

There was another small, whispered conversation between the advisor and Heata and then the changeling said, "Factoring in the cost of production, labor, and a small profit, your bill will be one billion credits or the equivalent in another valid form of currency."

Akira nearly fell over at the number. "A…a billion?"

"Well, this isn't exactly a common product; we would have to put off making something more profitable in order to produce it. Such a thing would cost me and my fleet a considerable amount of money. You thought it would be cheaper?"

"I, I can't pay that…" Akira didn't know what else he could do. He'd already missed his one year deadline coming to see this guy, who didn't even have the fuel, which ruled out the possibility of Akira just killing him and taking it. Heata did have the ability to make it, but Akira had no way of paying such an enormous amount.

"I am very sorry to hear that, Kanata." Heata didn't sound very sorry, actually he sounded slightly pleased to hear the hopelessness in Akira's voice. "However, as you can't pay and I don't do charity cases, I suggest you either find some way to pay the amount and then come back to see me or find a less expensive form of fuel to use."

He motioned with his hand and two guards began making their way towards Akira.

"Come any closer to me and I'll kill you were you stand," the saiyan growled, he might feel helpless, but he wasn't going to let himself be pushed around by these weaklings.

One guard froze, the other did not. A second later a ki blast separated the fool's head from the rest of his body. There was an audible gasp from the other guards and the advisor. Most of the guards looked ready to attack the young man, but Heata held up a hand and they relaxed ever so slightly, but continued glaring murderously at the smug saiyan.

"That is the third guard of mine that you've killed, it's getting to be a rather bothersome habit of yours," Heata said with a hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

"I won't leave here without that fuel," Akira's eyes were darting around the room, almost hoping that another of the guards lining the walls would take even the slightest step forward.

"Then I fear we are at an impasse, because I won't order the fuel to be manufactured until I've been paid," the changeling replied.

"Not really," the young man shot back, "I could just kill you and go get the fuel myself."

Heata started chuckling, "_Just kill_ me? Oh, Kanata, you definitely are an entertaining one and I'll give you points for courage. However, in this case, you would only be throwing your life away." His chuckling died away into a simple smug smile, as if he were explaining something to a small child who was not as smart as he thought himself to be. "For argument's sake let's say that you do manage to kill me, what happens then? There are literally thousands of worlds under my control; will you visit each one of them? You'll be spending the rest of your life searching."

"I'll just have to find someone that can give me directions," Akira's eyes unconsciously shifted just slightly in the direction of Heata's advisor.

The changeling glanced at the advisor. "Clever," he said, "but too slow." His eyes glowed faintly and then two thin ki beams shot out of them and pierced the poor alien's chest. The creature gave one small cry of shock and pain and then collapsed to the ground in a pool of blood.

Akira cursed his own stupidity, but did not allow his annoyance to show on his face. "I'm sure there are others who know the information I'm looking for."

Heata gave the young man an appraising look and then stood up. "I have a better idea. One which does not involve you running around my palace killing guards or bothering administrators who won't be able to help you anyway and one which will, I hope, be more pleasant for both of us than a fight to the death. Though I must confess it has been some time since I've had a good workout."

The saiyan watched the changeling carefully, looking for any sort of deceit on the alien's face but finding none. "What do you want?"

"I propose that you work for me to pay off your debt. You're obviously a warrior of impressive strength; you could be a great asset to my growing empire. In return for your services, I will grant you what you wish…as soon as you have paid the bill."

"How?"

"There is a great deal of money to be made in some of my…business ventures; particularly in planet acquisition. I'm sure you could have the debt paid in almost no time."

Akira noticed something sinister in the changeling's eyes, this was a bad deal. If he agreed now, chances were he'd never see the fuel for the time machine, but if he didn't agree, he would be back at square one and probably wouldn't see it anyway. He was trapped and he suspected Heata knew it.

'_Maybe it would be better just to walk away,'_ he thought, _'I could go back to Earth, kill that Arlean bastard, and then see Pan in heaven. The year is already up; I probably can't wish her back anyway, no matter what timeline I make the wish in.'_ For a moment he was almost ready to do it, but deep down he knew he couldn't give up, not when there was even the slimmest of hope that he might still be able to bring her back.

"Of course, I can't just start you off as a high ranking officer," Heata continued with a smile, perhaps seeing a hint of acceptance on the young man's face, "you'll have to work your way up and earn such a spot, but once you do, you'll have your fuel paid for in no time." The changeling's smile that told Akira that 'no time' was probably going to be a long ways off.

"I want to be paid as I go," Akira said as a sudden bit of inspiration hit him, "I don't care if you're bringing it to me a drop at a time, I want to be able to see that I'm not working for free."

Heata's smile grew larger. "I suppose in the spirit of compromise that can be arranged, though it will make the price go up since I will be using resources that could otherwise be used for something else," the changeling replied. "So, does this mean we have a deal?"

For some odd reason Akira saw a vision of himself signing his soul over to the devil, in a way, he thought that was exactly what he was doing. He knew what sort of work he'd be put to and he knew that when it was over he'd probably have thousands of deaths on his hands, maybe millions, but he was beyond caring anymore. In a way, returning to the old saiyan lifestyle was like the beginning of his revenge on the Arlean, not that the bastard probably cared about all the lives that would be lost because of his actions, Akira just needed a way to rationalize the decision which had been made just before he cut off his own tail. He would do anything.

"Yes, we have a deal."

Anything.

o

o

A/N:Sorry this chapter was all Akira. I tried thinking of something for the Z Fighters to be doing, but it would have just been busy work anyway as they don't have a lot to do except hang around and be dead. Anyway, thanks for all the reviews. You guys rock!


	39. On the Dark Path

**Chapter 39: On the Dark Path**

o

_He took her hand in his and squeezed it, "Please Pan. Please don't leave me," he whispered, lowering his head to hers._

_Even as the words left his lips, he felt her life force fade away. The young man pulled her onto his lap, kissing her bloodied forehead and rocking back and forth as he cried._

The dark haired warrior's eyes snapped open, a small stream of tears was running down his face, but he hurriedly brushed them away. That was one weakness he would not indulge in.

For a long time he lay in bed staring at the ceiling and trying to push the nightmare away. It didn't go far, but eventually it slipped to its usual spot in the back of his mind. With that accomplished he got up, quietly pulled on the training shorts which had been hastily discarded next to the bed, and then snatched up a large bottle from his bedside table as he walked out onto the balcony of his quarters.

It was raining again. It was always raining at this time of morning. Even on cloudless days the atmospheric controls forced the rain to come and wash away the grim and pollution that the large cities of Heata #00 were forever creating. The planet had once been known as Frieza #79, but the former ruler's cousin had renamed it when he decided to make it his capital. Regardless of the name, the planet's skies were still an ugly lavender color and the rain that normally fell was filled with acid both from the pollution and the planet's own foul atmosphere. It wasn't bad today, in fact, it was almost pleasant.

Almost, but not really.

The warrior's coal colored eyes scanned the dark clouds overhead with disgust, he hated the rain regardless of how much it burned him, the memories it brought with it were far more painful anyway. He supposed that some of his hatred stemmed from the fact that it had been raining on _that_ day, the day his life had been destroyed.

But even worst than that was that fact that _s__he_ had always loved the rain; she even made him come outside with her to play in it at every opportunity. Even now he could hear her laughter in his ears, feel the chill of the water when she splashed him by jumping in puddles, and the warmth of her body when she held him close and kissed him as the rain came down on their heads. It was one of her favorite things in life, and because she loved it, he had loved it. Now it was just another bitter reminder of what he had lost.

Of what had been stolen from him.

The saiyan closed his eyes and forced the sudden swell of emotion away. '_Someday,' _he promised as he had every morning for over a decade,_ 'someday it will all be made right. I'll make it right.'_ He unconsciously touched the this scar that ran along his right cheek as he lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swig of its vile contents. He didn't move from his spot for a long time as he drained the bottle of its brain-numbing alcohol.

Time slipped by unnoticed until two green skinned hands slid their way along his scarred, muscular back and around to his chest as warm, naked flesh was pressed against him. "You're up early," a seductive voice whispered in his ear. "I would have thought after last night you'd be pretty worn out."

Akira scowled and pulled away from her embrace. "Get your things and leave," he commanded. He felt dead inside, he always did in the morning, but it was especially bad in the mornings after he had gotten drunk and let a woman into his bed in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to escape the pain.

The woman looked startled for a moment, but then began to smile again, "Is that really what you want Kanata? We could have some more fun. My shift at the bar doesn't start for another few hours and we could pass the time together."

"I have no more use for you, whore," the saiyan replied coldly, it disgusted him that he had been with such a filthy woman. "Leave."

The woman crossed her arms and fumed for a moment before asking, "So, who was she?"

Akira didn't respond or even acknowledge the question.

"Well, who ever she was she must have done a dozy on you..."

The saiyan's face twisted in anger and for a second his eyes became turquoise as the emotions came close to triggering a transformation that had not taken place in a long, long time. In the end, he remained in control of himself, pushing the power back down by the force of his will alone. With his back to the woman, she didn't realize the danger she was in and her taunting continued.

"What, did she leave you for another man...or maybe another woman?" there was laughter in the alien female's voice, "Or did she just up and die on you?"

Akira spun, grabbed the woman by the throat and squeezed as he lifted her off the ground. "Get your things and LEAVE!" he yelled as a murderous rage filled his eyes. With a flick of his wrist he threw her headfirst into the room, sparing her life only because of the hassle it would cause him if he killed her.

The green skinned alien quickly obeyed, fearing for her life and no longer feeling amused at his suffering. She didn't even bother covering up before she rushed out of the room.

When she was finally gone, Akira took a deep breath and tried to let go of his anger as he exhaled. It partially worked. He took a second bottle off a small table next to him and began drinking again.

No matter what he did the pain was always there, the nightmares never left him, even when he was awake. Work, alcohol, sex, nothing could dull the constant ache in his heart for more than a few minutes. Nothing could give him a night of restful sleep. Nothing could make him forget his ultimate failure.

Nothing could make him forget _her._

He glanced down at his wrist, several long, deep scars ran across it, mementos from the times the pain had grown too much to bear or when he'd been too drunk to hold on to the will to keep fighting. In a way, it was good to know that there was something that could end his misery...perhaps it was time to just give it another try.

He immediately shook the thought from his head; there were more important things to do first. He couldn't give up now that he was so close.

After ten long, painful years the end was finally in sight. He already had enough fuel to go back; he just needed a little more for his return flight. One mission, maybe two if the lizard tried to short change him again.

Akira glanced at the clock on the wall inside his quarters. _'Maybe it wasn't__ such a good idea to start drinking so early...Heata will be pissed if I'm drunk when the missions are being assigned,'_ he thought as he took another long drink.

He drained the second bottle before he got dressed and a third was half way there by the time he finally left.

ooo

The saiyan casually strolled through the halls of the palace with his hands in his pocket; he was going to be late, but he didn't care. The changeling was well aware of the fact that even when he was drunk, Akira was still probably his most powerful warrior. The changeling probably wouldn't raise too much hell over a little tardiness either. Besides, it wasn't like it mattered to Akira if Heata was upset with him; he was going to kill the vile creature as soon as he got the fuel he needed anyway.

The saiyan's time spent working under Heata had almost been more than he could take. Only the knowledge that each civilization he wiped out, each planet he cleared, brought him one step closer to the only thing in life he cared about anymore. One step closer to fixing things. One step closer to knowing that she was alive again.

One step closer to revenge.

His thirst for revenge had been forced to take a back seat to his goal of reviving his friends, but the moment they were back he had every intention of unleashing the full force of his fury upon anyone who had anything to do with the Arlean. After that, nothing mattered. If he died, that was fine; if he lived, he would live with the knowledge that Pan was alive and well, regardless of what she thought of him.

For some reason his mind wandered back to what Goku had told him not long before his life took this interesting turn. He'd thought of those words almost everyday during the last decade.

_"You are getting very close to a darkness you don't want to touch. If you keep going the way you are, millions of people could suffer because of it."_

Akira couldn't deny that Goku had been right. While working for Heata, he'd help enslave or kill more people than he cared to count, probably more people than he _could_ count. He hadn't even gone out of his way to minimize the casualties among the innocent people whose planet he'd been conquering; in fact, he usually killed as many of them as possible. However, during the brief moments when his crew was elsewhere on a planet they were purging, he had occasionally allowed some of the fleeing masses to escape either into shuttles or at lest into some sort of hiding spot. Not enough to be noticed, but at least some of the races he'd conquered in the name of Heata would go on. Not that he expected to win any sort of award for mercy or anything, but it was comforting to know that at least a tiny piece of the person he used to be was still in there somewhere.

His rise through the ranks of Heata's army had been extremely slow; thanks, no doubt, to the changeling's desire to keep him enslaved for as long as possible. However, in the end Akira had become the leader of a five man planet purging crew, an elite one at that; he was just too good at his job to be held down for long. He walked into battles that others fled from; whenever a powerful race was encountered, Akira was the one to take on the planet's strongest warrior or, more often than not, strongest warriors. He had never resorted to using his Super Saiyan transformation, not wanting to give away what he truly was or that he was even stronger than the relatively high power he occasionally allowed the others to pick up on their scouters. The scars that covered his body attested to the fact that there were numerous times that he probably should have used the transformation.

Though not all of his scars were from battles.

During one of his first missions, he had found his Crew Leader, a blue skinned alien named Buke, raping a young woman with long, black hair; aside from the hair, she looked nothing like Pan, but it had been enough to make Akira's blood boil. The foolish captain had overlooked the fury on the saiyan's face and asked if he wanted to have fun with her next.

Without a word, Akira had ripped Buke's spine out of his back and then used it to beat what remained of the vermin's life out of him. It had been a very bloody, but very satisfying, four seconds.

Unfortunately there had been nearly two entire crews' worth of witnesses and he couldn't exactly kill them all without raising suspicions. So he had taken his punishment: two missions without pay and fifty lashes from an energy whip. They probably would have tried to execute him had Buke not been such an incompetent leader to begin with.

While he was being whipped, he had refused to cry out as his back was torn open. His silence had earned him an extra brutal lashing from the guard in charge, but had also earned him considerable respect among his peers. Not that he cared if they respected him for that or for any of the other times he'd quietly received a beating or even for his immense power; his comrades were all scum, but their respect helped his advancement and thus brought him that much closer to the only thing in the universe that mattered. For that much, at least, he was thankful.

And now here he was; one mission away. He would finish the job, get his fuel and then go back in time. After that, whether he was able to revive Pan or not, he was going to go hunting for an Arlean.

ooo

"I'm going to win this time Panny," the boy taunted as he powered up, "Dad's been teaching me all kinds of good tricks." With a burst of golden light he became a Super Saiyan and then dropped into his fighting stance with a silly grin on his face.

Pan smiled at him as she also powered up and got into her fighting stance, amazed at how strong he was getting, but not concerned in the slightest. Despite his boasts, Kumo was no where near her level...yet. Still, if he kept improving at this pace, it wouldn't be long before he surpassed her and everyone else, with the exception of Vegeta and...Akira.

Her smile faultered slightly. It had been a long time since she'd seen him or even heard anything about him. She never asked anymore. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to know.

No, that was a lie. She did want to know; she desperately wanted to here how he was doing, but she didn't think her heart could take it. Every once in a while, King Kai would suddenly look distracted and she knew he was probably sensing something Akira was doing (though there was the outside possibility that the kai had other things to do than keep tabs on her long lost boyfriend). The question was always on the tip of her tongue when King Kai looked like that, but it stayed there now. It would always remain unspoken, ever since the day Kumo got his body back.

_"King Kai! How are you?" King Yemma exclaimed happily as the kai and several other people appeared on the large man's desk._

_"As well as ever King Yemma," King Kai replied with a chuckle._

_"So, what can I do for you?"_

_Before the kai could answer, Goten stepped forward and said, "We want you to give my son his body so he can train with us..." King Kai shot the saiyan a look and Goten sheepishly added, "uh...please?"_

_"Hmmm," King Yemma mused as he stroked his chin, "That would be very difficult...the paper work alone would take my aids months to complete...I'm sorry, I don't think that this is something that can be done."_

_"That's a terrible excuse!" Vegeta roared, "The saiyans have saved this entire universe from destruction on more than one occasion, and saved you a lot of paper work I might add. You should be bending over backwards to help us."_

_Yemma glanced at King Kai who shrugged helplessly and then turned back to Vegeta. "Any favors your race might feel entitled to are quickly being used up," he said in annoyance._

_"What's that supposed to mean?" the Saiyan Prince demanded._

_Pan noticed King Kai's jaw tighten as he stared at King Yemma, whatever it was that the judge of the deceased was talking about had King Kai angry._

_Yemma's eyes moved just slightly so he was looking over Vegeta's shoulder at the long line of clouds that went back as far as the eye could see. Pan followed his gaze, and then looked back at King Kai, and then turned her attention to King Yemma. A second later, it clicked._

_"This has to do with Akira," it was not a question, but it caused Yemma and King Kai to shift their eyes away from her. "What has happened?" she asked quietly._

_Neither diety answered._

_Golden light errupted around her as she transformed. "Tell me NOW!" she slammed her fist down on King Yemma's ancient desk which had stood in that place since time began. The desk cracked right down the middle and would have fallen apart had Yemma not grabbed hold of it and held it together while several aids scrambled to make what repairs they could._

_King Yemma glared at Pan and then called out, "Next!"_

_A small cloud floated up to the desk, trembling slightly._

_"Name?"_

_"Matsubala, sir," came the voice of a young man._

_"For the sake of my friends here, Matsubala, would you be so kind as to tell me how you died?" King Yemma asked, while some sort of tape was run around his desk and boards were hammered into it._

_"T,the demon that came from the sky..."_

_"A demon you say? Tell me, did this demon have any companions?"_

_"Yes, there were four others with him, but they were weaker," the little cloud replied. "My people are mighty warriors, we could have beaten the others, but the demon Kanata simply walked through our attacks as if they were nothing."_

_"What's this all about?" Vegeta asked irritably, "We don't care about anything named Kanata."_

_King Yemma waited for the Saiyan Prince's small tirade to end and then calmly motioned for the little cloud to continue._

_"My father was the most powerful warrior on the planet, he defeated one of the demon's companions easily, but before he could kill the one they called 'Captain,' the demon attacked. My father fought bravely, but the demon only toyed with him. Every time my father seemed to land a blow, the demon simply faded away like mist and reappeared somewhere else." The cloud shuttered for a moment and then said, "In the end, the demon killed my father with a single punch and then he destroyed our village."_

_"Your people are telepaths, are they not?" King Yemma asked._

_"Y,yes sir. We can read the minds of others."_

_"Did you happen to peer into the mind of this Kanata?"_

_"I, I did look. His mind was filled with many terrible images..." the cloud shifted slightly and Pan got the impression that it was now looking at her, "but mostly his mind was filled with thoughts of this one."_

_The words shook Pan to her core, but not as much as what was to come._

_"One final question before I send you to Paradise. What does Kanata call himself in his mind?" King Yemma asked._

_"T,the demon called himself...Akira."_

_Reality seemed to fade to black for Pan. She didn't remember the discussion between King Kai and King Yemma that ultimately got little Kumo his body back; she didn't remember King Yemma explaining that the little boy would age normally until he reached maturity and after that would remain as he was; she didn't remember hugging Kumo when the little boy appeared; and she didn't remember King Kai taking them back to the Great Kai Planet or the consoling words from her father and friends._

_All she remembered were the words that would haunt her for years._

_"The demon called himself...Akira."_

ooo

"Thank you for finally joining us Kanata," Heata said sarcastically as Akira wandered into the room. "I do hope this meeting won't be too much of an inconvenience on your tight schedule."

"Please forgive my tardiness, Lord Heata," the saiyan said with a respectful bow, "I promise to make it up to you on which ever planet you wish me and my crew to visit next."

The changeling nodded at the warrior's submissive attitude and began explaining the missions. Akira strongly suspected that Heata wasn't fooled by the humble servant act the saiyan was always putting on in his "master's" presence, but as long as he was paid, he didn't care.

Normally jobs were handed out by a commanding officer, but today's missions were special, they had been hand picked by Heata himself as had the crews that would be assigned to each. Every one of the planets being assigned today had repelled multiple attacks and the crews that would make the next attempt were the elite even among the Elite.

"Your mission is the most vital Kanata," Heata said as he handed the saiyan the details, "Planet Llum has been in open rebellion for over a year and yet no one sent to squash the rebellion has returned. If other planets begin to think that I can be opposed, my forces will be forced to run around putting out rebellions when they should be expanding my empire."

Akira scanned the information in front of him, his eyes were blood shot from the alcohol and he could barely read what he was looking at, but one thing caught his attention, "Their average power level is 27,000?"

"Is that going to be a problem for your crew?"

"It could be if too many of the Llumians are much stronger than that. This kind of job usually takes a couple of crews."

Heata smiled smugly, "From what I've been told and seen, you should be one of my strongest warriors, surely one of your power can handle such a small planet? But if you can't, I suppose I could just take care of this myself...of course, the punishment for such cowardice on your part would be a _significant_ cut in pay...if you were even allowed to live at all."

"You flatter me with your praise of my strength," Akira replied smoothly. "Forgive my uncertainty. I will happily take this job and complete it with all haste as I live but to serve you, my Lord."

"Glad to hear it, now get going, you are dismissed."

Akira bowed his head and exited the room, pulling a communicator from his pocket as he went and signaling his crew to meet him by the space pods.

ooo

As soon as Akira was gone, Heata placed a scouter on his head and turned it in the direction the young man had been walking. A large power level was moving down the hall at a brisk pace, just as he was supposed to be.

"Excellent," the changeling said with a sly smile as he turned to the remaining Crew Captains, "Now then, ignore everything I have said up until now; those planets have nothing to do with your mission."

A few of the captains glanced at each other in confusion. "Then what is our mission, my Lord?" one of the braver ones asked.

"You will all have the task of removing a thorn from my side," Heata said grimly. "He is one of our own and yet he remains aloof. He pretends to enjoy his job, but I have seen his disgust in his eyes when he thinks no one is looking. Because of his skill and the fact that I held something he clearly desires more than life itself, he has been a loyal soldier; however, he has nearly achieved his goal and after that he will become a liability. I believe that he will attempt to betray me very soon."

Heata looked around the room; letting his words soak in and then said, "Your mission will be to kill Kanata."

o

o

**A/N:** The planet Frieza #79 (renamed Heata #00) is the planet Vegeta goes to after his defeat on Earth. The planet Llum comes from one of the StarWars books (it's a frozen planet that young jedi go to in order to find crystals for their lightsabers), but I don't think there are 'Llumians' in the StarWars universe.

**A/N:** I think this might have been my favorite chapter, which is good since a lot of it has been planned out since the beginning. I just liked picturing the opening scene in my head as if it were on TV. We see Akira all battle hardened and still depressed after all this time and we think, 'oh, poor guy,' and the BAM some naked woman comes in and we realize that Akira has turned into something horrible over the years (even worse than he was when we last saw him). The whole thing with Kumo was a bit random, but I just couldn't see someone being forced to remain a two year old for all of eternity…plus, it was a good way to show Pan finding out about what Akira has become. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please review and let me know what you thought.

Toni the Mink: Goku did kind of hint that he might be able to go SSJ5 as well, didn't he? I don't actually think it will really come up as being anything important, I just figured Goku would continue growing stronger regardless of where he was. As for him giving up too easily while trying to make Akira to see the error of his way, I don't know if it was so much that Goku gave up easily, just that Akira was pretty firm on his stance. It's hard to get someone to change their mind when they say (and honestly believe) that they'd sacrifice the entire universe just to accomplish their goal.

Courtney: You're the second person to bring up the similarities between Akira and Anakin Skywalker and you're right, the two are a bit alike. Now that I think about it, Goku's line about the old Akira being dead is rather Obiwan-esc.

TheTiny: I've got a pretty good explanation for Heata's name, which I happen to think is rather clever, but it won't be coming up for a couple of chapters. Mostly I went with Heata because I couldn't think of any other names that worked along the naming scheme of Frieza's family (cold, freezer, cooler). The only one that seemed to work was some form of refrigerator, but 'Frigerata' or 'Refrigerata' just doesn't have the same flow to it as Heata.

mikarai: Thanks for reading all that (and for reviewing), I'm glad you've enjoyed my stories so far. I don't know if Akira will lose _everything_, he got his hair back after all…

darksupersaiyan: Goku is definitely still alive. I got the impression at the end of GT that he was being taken to wherever it is that the dragon stays when he isn't granting wishes. I think Goku will make at least one more appearance in the story, though I haven't completely made up my mind on that one.

Legend: I make no promises, but I don't think you'll be too mad in the end.

Everyone Else: Thanks for all the reviews!


	40. Suicide Mission

**Chapter 40: Suicide Mission**

o

A few years ago, the people of Llum would have found the sight of five shooting stars appearing in the early morning sky a thing of wonder. The planet's temperature rarely rose above freezing, so the five objects had long tails of steam, making them appear all the more intriguing. Perhaps the government would have dispatched some scientists to investigate the crash sites of these peculiar meteorites and no doubt it would have made the evening news and been in the periodicals the next day.

That was no longer the case; the Llumians had learned their lesson long ago. These five orbs falling from the sky were not wonderful; they were the bringers of death. The moment they entered the atmosphere, the military was called forth and sent to the projected landing site.

Llum was once again under invasion.

ooo

Akira eyes opened as the pod hit the ground and the hatch opened. He hated these trips. With the ship forcing him to remain asleep, he had to endure a seemingly endless stream of nightmares with no hope of waking. At least this trip had been relatively short, only 48 hours.

Still, dreams didn't take place in real time; five hours in a dream might only be five minutes in the waking world. In 48 hours, Akira had relived the deaths of his friends dozens of times, the guilt and responsibility he still felt causing his brain to add little twisted touches that had not actually happened. Harsh words spoken by them before they expired when he was certain they had died before he arrived, his own hand delivering the death blow when he knew he was not the one who had really done the killing, and of course Pan's death was always bloodier, more brutal, and more painful than it had actually been when he saw it. He was always glad to wake up, even if it meant he was about to destroy a planet full of innocent people.

"Nightmares again?" a soft voice asked him as he stepped out of his pod.

Akira glared at the short woman with curly red hair, but nodded in reply. With the exception of the pointed ears and the slight golden tint to her skin, Cyress could almost have passed for human; an attractive human at that. Of the four warriors under Akira's command, she had been there the longest. The two of them had been through many battles, more than once they'd been some of the few to make it out alive.

After only a few missions together, Akira had made her his second in command. Primarily because of her brilliant mind for strategy, but also because of herhigh power level. Her impressive track record under him and his constant compliments about her work in his reports had not gone unnoticed by the higher ups in Heata's organization; she had been offered the promotion to commander of her own crew on several occasions, but had turned it down each time.

Akira could guess why; it had to do with the way she was looking at him at this moment. In all honesty he was flattered, she was a very smart and very beautiful woman; he just wasn't interested. He knew that she wouldn't be the type that would be satisfied with sharing his bed whenever he was too drunk to say no, she would want more and he couldn't or wouldn't give it. However, even though he didn't return her feelings, he did enjoy her company during the missions. Of all the people that he had served with, Cypress was the only one who didn't seem to enjoy the senseless killing that came with the job. It was more of a game to her, a challenge to figure out the best way to out maneuver her opponents. Once they were beaten, that was enough for her; she didn't bother butchering a defeated enemy. Because of that, she was the only one he ever came close to calling his friend.

It was too bad he was going to have to kill her soon.

"Do we have a fix on the Llumian forces yet?" he asked, slipping into commander mode as his eyes scanned the mountainous horizon. According to the information Heata had given him, the planet was almost completely covered in snow and ice except for the areas around the many active volcanoes that dotted the planet's surface.

"They're assembling not far from here," a short, dark skinned warrior named Bladdeon replied as numbers and symbols flashed across his scouter for a moment and then stopped. "Damn cold," he complained as he smacked the side of his head, the screen over his eye began flashing again. "The scouters aren't going to work very well if we're out in this weather too long."

Bladdeon was sort of the middle man of Akira's crew. He wasn't a great strategist, but he was good enough to make the right decisions when needed and he wasn't the strongest fighter, but his ki manipulation skills were so fine tuned that it made up for his lack of strength. The only thing he was top of the list on was his enthusiasm about the job; nothing gave him more pleasure than clearing a planet of all intelligent life forms…except maybe getting paid for clearing a planet of all intelligent life forms.

"You might have warned us that..." Debian started to say.

"...the planet was going to be this cold, Kanata. Or perhaps..." Loomingrazor continued.

"...adjusted our trajectory so we hit a warmer spot." Debian finished.

Akira rolled his eyes at them. Debian and Loomingrazor claimed to be twins, but it seemed highly unlikely, they didn't even look like they were the same species.

Loomingrazor was enormous; he was so tall that Akira barely came up to his chest. The warrior also had incredibly broad shoulders and large muscles; Akira had no idea how the man even fit in his space pod. His purple hair was tied back in a small ponytail behind him, reminiscent of the hairstyle samurai warriors had worn in ancient times on Earth, and he had a long goatee which curled out at the end. His strength was quite formidable as were his ki attacks, but what he really excelled at was using the huge sword strapped to his back. During battles he could often be seen chasing down fleeing, helpless enemies, cutting them to ribbons. The warrior was a killing machine and he enjoyed it.

Debian was almost the complete opposite of his "twin." His bright orange hair was short and messy and he was either incapable of growing facial hair or always kept it shaved. He was roughly the same height and build as Akira, but there was something about his face that almost made him seem more fragile than the others. He was a capable enough fighter, but was easily the weakest of Akira's men, which might explain why his favorite part of the mission was picking through the cities and killing those too weak or too injured to fight back. The "twins" came as a pair; neither Loomingrazor nor Debian would say a word if the other wasn't there to finish his "brother's" sentences.

"You are soldiers; you can handle a little cold and ice," Akira told them sternly, "Once the fighting starts, I'm sure you'll be plenty warm. Speaking of which, what are we looking at for power levels from the welcoming party?"

He already knew the basic answer since he could sense the enormous cluster of strength and be could have used his own scouter to get an exact reading, but he found that if he just did everything for himself his subordinates grew bored and weren't as good at improvising when they needed to. This way they were apart of the process and learned a little bit of battle strategy along the way.

"It looks like the Llumians are much stronger than what was reported," Cypress said as she pointed her scouter in the direction of the Llumian forces, numbers flashed across it excitedly as it registered the numerous high energy signatures. "I'm getting an average power level of nearly 40,000! Plus several individuals that are well over 100,000." She glanced up at Akira, "Kanata, this is not a mission we can complete on our own. We should leave and request more crews; this will take at least six elite crews, maybe more."

Akira activated his own scouter and scanned the Llumian forces; she was right, there was no way this mission should have been given to a single crew. No one would make this kind of mistake.

Heata had finally decided to get rid of him.

The saiyan looked into the eyes of the other four members of his crew, taking note of the worry he saw there. "If you were on any other crew, you could be executed for the fear you're showing on your faces right now," he warned. "However, in this case, Cypress is right. This is a suicide mission. Which explains why Heata gave it to me."

"What do you..."

"...mean by that?" Debian and Loomingrazor asked.

"Nothing, don't worry about it," Akira said wearily. "Cypress, if you had an enemy with this kind of strength, but retreat was not an option, how would you attack them?

The beautiful warrior thought for a moment and then said, "Attacking head on would be pointless with our current numbers. We could use hit and run tactics to wear down their forces, but in the end we probably wouldn't be able to take out more than half of them before we were wiped out; especially since they know we're here and know the terrain better than we do. There is no way we can win here."

"What if, hypothetically, there was a warrior in our group whose power could even the odds? How would you approach things then?"

"How strong are we talking?" the confusion on her face told him that she didn't understand the point of his question. Cypress, like all the others, had no idea what Akira really was capable of; she knew he was strong, but she probably hadn't even glimpsed a quarter of his true power.

"Strong enough."

"Well, hypothetically, I suppose I'd have this warrior attack the enemy head on, aiming mostly for their most powerful fighters so the rest of us wouldn't have to worry about them. If he could survive long enough to distract the majority of the enemy, our remaining fighters would move to either side of the enemy forces and attack them from their flanks, hopefully meeting this super warrior in the middle."

"Someone mind telling me what you two are talking about?" Bladdeon asked crossly.

Akira ignored the question and began issuing orders, "Loomingrazor and Debian, you two will circle around to the east; Cypress and Bladdeon will go to the west."

"Wait, you can't be serious!" Cypress looked panicked, "Sir, I've been with you since you took command, you won't survive this attack. It's suicide."

"It doesn't matter," Akira said with a small smile, his crew wasn't sure they'd ever even seen him smile before. "I won't let any of my enemies walk away from this battle."

The four aliens' mouths fell open as Akira took to the air and flew towards the mass of Llumian warriors.

"He can't seriously be doing..."

"...what we think he's doing." Debian/Loomingrazor said in awe as they watched him go.

"Does he have a death wish or something?" Bladdeon added.

Cypress was quiet for a moment and then said, "He has for as long as I've known him." She glanced at the others, "Well, we have our orders, let's go!"

The four warriors took off in their assigned directions, each wondering how they were going to survive the coming battle.

ooo

Heata sat in his personal quarters drinking a glass of wine and sighing contentedly. Soon, Llum would be defeated or at least considerably weakened, while Kanata and many other Elite warriors would be dead. The changeling had little doubt that the powerful warrior would be able to complete his mission and defeat those pesky Llumians; and he was equally certain that the ten crews he'd sent to kill Kanata would be able to successfully complete their mission. Of course, the powerful warrior would probably take a large number of the Elites down with him, but that was no matter, most of them had reached the end of their usefulness anyway.

Heata was not like his cousin or uncle; he didn't want the whole universe, just a good chunk of it. Once Llum and its mighty warriors fell, most other planets in this sector would be too afraid to oppose him. He would no longer have much need of his elite forces, or the high pay that they felt entitled to.

The most important part, though, was getting rid of Kanata.

Heata pressed a few buttons on his computer and brought up the elite warrior's file. The man was a piece of work. He'd never submitted himself for any sort of medical examination, claiming he didn't trust doctors because they always gave him shots. He refused to use the regeneration tank, regardless of how wounded he was; he claimed this was due to a fear of being submerged in liquid in as enclosed space. Yet for all his phobias, he never failed in his missions and never backed down from an assignment, injured or not, drunk or not, he was a warrior through and through.

And also a liar.

Heata had looked at the example his cousin had set and felt that he had to learn an important lesson from Frieza's failure. The lesson was: Never trust anyone, especially not someone with an agenda that is not your own.

Freiza had allowed the saiyans to live for far too long, thinking that they were loyal to him. When he began to see that they were loyal only to themselves and their sense of pride, he had destroyed their planet, but had not bothered to hunt down every last member of the race and eradicate them. In the end the fool, blinded by his own power, had been defeated by one of the monkeys and had taken his father down with him.

Heata would not make the same mistake. He kept tabs on everyone that worked for him. He had files on all of their species, the extents of all of their fighting abilities, even an exact measurement of all of their power levels.

All but one.

It had been less than a year into Kanata's employment, when Heata had first begun to notice something was wrong. The man was different than the rest of the changeling's soldiers, he didn't talk any more than necessary to anyone, even during his free time; he had once killed a commanding officer, though it had actually saved Heata the hassle of doing it himself; and he refused all medical attention. And then there was the training.

Gravity training had been around for quite some time and all of Heata's men were required to spend at least a few hours a week exercising in one of the gravity rooms. They were told that this was required because it would help them should they be sent to a planet with a higher than normal gravity, but actually it was so Heata could monitor their progress.

Every gravity room was equipped with hidden sensors that would measure the occupant's power level as they trained. The gravity controls were linked to Heata's personal computer, so he could adjust the pressure a soldier was working under without changing what the gravity room display claimed the gravity was set to. Heata often enjoyed slowly increasing the gravity until a soldier was unable to even take a step. It was not only entertaining, but it also gave him a more accurate reading on how strong his men were.

If someone grew too strong, they were sent on extremely dangerous missions until they were killed in duty. This way no one's power ever came too close to Heata's and he was able to whittle down the defenses of the stronger planets.

Kanata was an exception. His pay was almost half that of his fellow elites and most of that was in the form of a fuel that was harvested from the planetary rings of a nearby gas giant; the fuel was rare and extremely impractical to use, but it was also not nearly as expensive as Heata had let Kanata believe. If the warrior were given a fair price, he would have had almost ten times as much fuel as he currently had. For this reason Heata kept Kanata around, even though he was most likely much stronger than the other elites. Until the warrior had enough fuel for whatever it was that he needed it, he was basically Heata's slave.

However, recently Kanata had begun to act different; he wasn't demanding a new mission nearly as frequently as he had in the last nine and a half years and he had taken to intentionally annoying his superiors. It could only mean one thing: Kanata almost had what he needed.

When Heata had noticed the change he had begun testing Kanata more strenuously than before during his required gravity training. Most of Heata's elites could handle in between 75 and 100 times Heata #00's gravity (HG), much beyond that and they were quickly worn down. Kanata always worked out in 78 HG, more than some, but less than most. Durning one session that Heata had adjusted in an attempt to discover the man's true power; Kanata had gone for five straight hours in 400 HG. No doubt he'd noticed the change in gravity after a while, but he simply hadn't even cared enough to mention it.

It simply wasn't a big deal to him.

This in itself was startling, but when the readouts from the sensors had come in, Heata had discovered that the warrior's power level had barely changed at all. It was as if the power level that the sensors read was just for show, a disguise for someone or something much more powerful than any being Heata had ever encountered.

That was when he had begun planning the destruction of Kanata. He didn't care if it cost him his entire Elite force, he had to kill Kanata before the warrior had a chance to turn on him.

To ensure this, he had not only sent the top ten elite crews after the mysterious man, he had also ordered Kanata's ship be rigged to explode after five minutes should it take off from Llum. A simple precaution in case the elite crews failed.

Soon, Heata would be assured of the fact that he was alone on top of the food chain. No warrior would be strong enough to defeat him and no planet would dare to oppose him.

Everything was falling into place for him.

ooo

The Llumian forces had no idea what hit them when Akira's attack began. One moment they were preparing to unleash hell upon the newest invaders of their planet, the next, hell had arrived.

All they felt was a sudden powerful gust of wind, and then he was in the midst of them, deadly ki beams ending the lives of many before they understood that they were under attack. To their credit, the soldiers quickly realized what was happening and focused in on him as he hurried to kill of their more powerful warriors before the Llumians could form any sort of strategy.

Within seconds he had carved a large path of death and destruction through the middle of the cluster of aliens. A few of their counter attacks managed to do some damage, particularly when he was hit in the same spot by multiple warriors at the same time, but for the most part, they were helpless before him.

And then the rest of the crew joined in the fun.

Loomingrazor's powerful sword killed Llumian soldiers by the dozens; Debian's speed and ability to spot weaker fighters so he could dispose of them, quickly thinned the ranks considerably; Bladdeon's deadly accurate ki attacks picked off opponents before they even realized where the attack was coming from; and Cypress's power and cunning had enemies so confused, they were often attacking each other. But the most deadly, and therefore most targeted, was Akira as he continued to drive his way through the now terrified Llumians.

A battle that had been called suicide not long before it started, ended up lasting less than forty-five minutes.

When the fighting finally died down, Akira sat on a fairly clean patch of snow, looking around the battlefield with an unreadable expression on his face. His whole body was covered in blood, though most of it was not his, and his armor was cracked and broken in numerous places; his dark eyes followed Loomingrazor and Debian as they searched for, and executed, wounded survivors of the massacre. Beyond them, he could see Cypress gazing at the destruction with a look that resembled disgust on her face.

"Wow, Kanata," a deep voice filled with admiration said as a hand slapped him on the shoulder, "I never knew you had that kind of power."

Akira's eyes glanced up at Bladdeon for a second and then returned to observing the others.

The dark-skinned warrior continued his praise, "That was just amazing! The bastards never even knew what hit 'em."

"Why do we do this?" Akira asked without looking up. "Do you think there's honor in what we do?"

Bladdeon laughed, thinking that his commander was making a joke, "Honor? Who cares about honor? This is all about getting paid! After what we just did, we're going to be the richest sons of bitches in Heata's ar--"

He stopped as pain ripped through him. Slowly he looked down at Akira's arm embedded in his chest. "W,why?" he asked as his eyes began to cloud over.

"Because," the saiyan whispered with a smile as he removed his hand and watched Bladdeon collapse to the ground, mortally wounded, "I said I wasn't going to let any of my enemies leave this battlefield alive."

"What the fuck are…"

"...you doing Kanata?" Loomingrazor/Debian cried out as they ran towards their fallen comrade.

Akira stood and faced them, his face devoid of emotion, "There is no way any of you would have walked away from this battle were it not for me, so no one will question why you didn't return."

Debian's hand moved up to switch the scouter to long-range communication, probably trying to alert Heata of Akira's betrayal.

Before Debian's finger was even half way to the button, he and his twins' scouters exploded as Akira's barrier fell away and the full extent of his pretransformation power was picked up.

"I can't say it's been a pleasure, but it has been an experience," Akira said as he blasted a hole through Debian's head.

"Y,You killed..." Loomingrazor gasped in shock, "...going to kill...fucking bastard."

"I guess this explains why you two came as a pair," Akira said calmly as Loomingrazor lifted the enormous sword and swung it down at him. "You can't even finish a thought without each other." One of the saiyan's hands shot up and caught the blade before it could touch his head, the other glowed as he raised it up into Loominrazor's face and blew the large warrior away.

_'One left,'_ he thought as he turned to find Cypress.

She was standing not far behind him, watching him calmly and looking neither shocked nor afraid. Akira made his way towards her, but she did not run or cower before him.

"I always thought you were different," she said quietly. "I suppose deep down I knew that you would do something like this."

"Why didn't you turn me in then? Heata's plenty paranoid; he would have tried to have me executed just because of the accusation."

She looked at the ground, "You know why." She reached up and took off her scouter, crushing it in her hand and then dropping it to the ground. "Do you ever wonder how your life would have turned out if you'd taken the 'other path,' done something different at that one moment that changed your life?

"My people were brave and mighty, and I was one of the strongest among them, but when Heata's men arrived, they defeated me and destroyed my home. I had never known fear, but I felt it that day. I begged for my life. I pleaded for him to spare me and then swore my allegiance to him when he did."

A small trickle of tears began to run down her cheeks, "I wish I would have died there with my parents and my brother, died with honor." She looked up at him and smiled, "I will not be a coward today, I will happily die at your hands and be freed from this hell."

Akira gazed at her in silence and then his hand began to glow as it rose in front of her face. He would make it quick and painless.

o

o

**A/N**: This chapter was actually longer, but since it ended up being basically as long as two chapters, I decided to actually turn it into two chapters. Hopefully you all liked it. I'm trying not to get too bogged down on all the fighting that's going on because the details aren't important, only the fact that the battle happened. Sorry to spend all that time introducing Akira's entire crew and then have them start getting offed, but it just didn't work to leave them without descriptions. The names for the crew members came from people I know in Final Fantasy XI (I'm Debian, though I've gotten bored with the game and don't really play anymore).

**A/N**: A lot of people had questions about 'how Akira can atone for his crimes after all of this.' Interestingly enough, this story was originally just going to be about Akira trying to get his friends back, but it's actually morphed into a bit of a story of redemption. Hopefully in the end, Akira's (and everyone else's) fate will be acceptable or at least logical.

DynastyDrummer: Kumo ages for two reasons. First, I just couldn't see him being stuck as a two year old floating around in heaven; second, I needed a reason for Pan and everyone to go to see King Yemma and this was the first idea that popped into my head.

Midnight46: Haha, I laughed so hard when I read your review. It's bad that Akira's slaughtering planets full of people, but sleeping around is truly evil! Though I understand why you feel that way. After all, we knew that he was going to be doing things like that, but most people didn't see him becoming the kind of guy who would get drunk and sleep with someone. It was just funny to read a review that was more outraged over Akira's evening escapades than his planetary conquests.

Toni the Mink: Though I haven't given it much thought, I imagine that Trunks and Icalla simply see each other on a pretty frequent basis when he comes to visit. It would be hard to make a marriage work when only one of you has a body and you are living in two different places. Perhaps I'll write a scene explaining what's going on with them sometime in the future.


	41. Parting Ways

**Chapter 41: Parting Ways**

o

Piccolo sighed as he tried unsuccessfully to meditate. For some reason he'd been thinking of Akira more and more lately and it was wrecking havoc on his concentration. He wasn't sure if it was some sort of a hold over from the time part of him had spent as Earth's Guardian or if it was just because he had grown pretty close to Akira when they had trained on King Kai's planet, but it occasionally seemed like he could feel the young man.

No, not 'young man', just 'man.' Akira would be about thirty by now…or fifteen, depending on how you looked at it.

It wasn't that he could sense Akira or communicate with him telepathically, it was just a feeling he occasionally got. A sixth sense, if you will. Whatever it was, it gave him the impression that things were coming to a head in the saiyan's life. Whether that was a good thing or not, he wasn't really sure.

The namek stood and walked over to King Kai who was staring off into space, a clear sign that something was happening in the land of the living that had his attention. The other Z Fighters were elsewhere 'training' with fighters from other parts of the universe; actually they were just using the poor warriors from the east and south quadrants as punching bags.

Piccolo stood next to the kai silently for several minutes before King Kai asked, "Can I do something for you Piccolo?"

"I was just wondering if you had heard anything from Akira lately."

The kai's eyebrow arched considerably, no one had really mentioned the prodigal saiyan in a long time, though they all thought about him fairly often. "Actually, he's fighting right now."

"Killing off another planet?" Piccolo asked gruffly, he still couldn't believe that Akira had become what King Kai and King Yemma had described. However, he couldn't argue with the enormous flood of evidence, he'd personally spoken with a number of warriors who had met their end at the saiyan's hands.

"YesHe and the people that came with him finished off the Lumians a few minutes ago, but now…Akira is killing off his comrades. It doesn't seem to make any sense. Something has changed for him, but I can't say what, he still refuses to respond to me."

ooo

As the glow surrounding Akira's hand faded, he bowed his head slightly, unsure if he should be disgusted with his actions or not. In the end, it didn't matter, there wasn't anything left for him to do now except to go get his payment and then talk to a dragon about bringing some people back from the dead.

He calmly walked over to one of the space pods, reached his hand in, and ripped out the transmitter. The pod would still function properly, but it wouldn't automatically broadcast it's location to any of Heata's ships or outposts.

"Go," he told the shocked red haired woman standing behind him, "Do something with your life to make up for what we've done over the years and find peace. Find salvation."

"You aren't going to kill me?" she asked in disbelief and perhaps just a hint of disappointment.

"No," he said quietly as he absentmindedly touched the scar on his cheek. Cypress had notice that he tended to do that a lot whenever he did something that would be considered merciful or even good. "I have enough innocent blood on my hands for ten lifetimes; I don't want to be responsible for the death of another fre…of another person." The two stared at each other in silence for a moment as neither of them was sure what to say or do next.

"What about you?" Cypress finally asked, still having difficulty believing that he couldn't bring himself to kill her. "What will you do?"

"I have my own demons to face."

"You could come with me; maybe we could find peace together." The meaning behind the words was clear.

"There is no salvation for me and no peace, not until I make things the way they were supposed to be" he replied; there was a small sparkle in his eye as though years of pent up tears were trying to surface, but couldn't break through. Cypress looked up at him in confusion and took a hesitant step forward as though she might try to hug him, but she restrained herself. They were warriors after all.

"No one is beyond salvation Kanata," she whispered, one of her hands came up and gently cupped his pain filled face.

He flinched at her touch and took a small step back, refusing to let the walls that surrounded him come down.

Cypress sighed and then said, "No matter how far we fall our creator, Jouten, still loves us; still calls for us in the darkness...at least that's what my mother always told me." She smiled sadly at the bitter sweet memory, "I thought it was just a fairy tale told to children at bedtime, but it was such a _nice_ fairy tale…I hope there's some truth in it."

She looked at him one last time, the offer to join her still hung in the air, but he would not or could not take it and so she gave him one last smile and then stepped into the pod. No more words passed between them; their paths had parted. Hers toward hope and light; and his towards the desire that had burned within him for a decade.

A desire for which he had turned his back on all that he once was.

It was as he watched her ship shot into the air and away from the planet that he felt them. Dozens of large power levels were heading straight towards him. The best of Heata's elite forces.

A smile crossed Akira's face, perhaps there really was such a thing as Jouten. If so, then He must be trying to make up for the hell he'd forced the saiyan to live through during this last decade because He had just given Akira a wonderful present. He wouldn't have to go back to Earth thinking that he had left these scumbags out here terrorizing the helpless populations he himself had helped subjugate.

It took them only a few seconds to reach him, all fifty of them were dressed in their armor and eying him wearily.

"Captain Kanata," one of the other captains called out, "Lord Heata has ordered your immediate execution."

"So, the weakling finally realized that he was playing with fire, did he?" the saiyan replied with a smirk.

"Don't make this harder on yourself than it has to be Kanata," another captain said, not liking the look on Akira's face.

"Unfortunately for him," Akira continued as though he hadn't even heard the second alien speak, "he's already gotten burned; he just doesn't know how badly yet." Akira's power level began to rise, "And you…well, you're already dead."

With a roar, a tornado of golden light engulfed him and the universe once again beheld the majesty of a legendary Super Saiyan. Heata's elite soldiers didn't know what they were up against, but the explosion of their scouters as Akira's power level eclipsed three million and continued rising with no end in sight was enough for their eyes to widen in fear.

"W,what are you?" one of them gasped as he began to back away.

"I don't even know anymore," Akira replied with a frightening smile, "I used to be a defender of the weak…" he paused and thought for a moment, "I guess now I'm just a saiyan of old."

One of the captains fired a ki blast at the Super Saiyan. The blast exploded when it hit its target, but Akira shot through the smoke, not even singed, and drove his fist into the alien's stomach. The captain's eyes went wide as Akira removed his now blood covered hand and watched happily as the alien fell to the ground; he wasn't dead yet, but his last few moments of life were quickly and painfully draining out of him.

Akira turned away from his first victim and threw a distructo disk at the remaining mob of elite soldiers; the disk was thrown low so as not to kill and end the saiyan's fun; it simply separated several legs from the rest of their bodies.

Akira laughed a deep, evil laugh as he built a masterpiece of blood and pain out of the elite crews who had been sent to kill him.

ooo

Ugh," King Kai said as he pulled his mind away from the grisly images that he could see happening on the planet Llum. Akira's dispatching of Heata's men was not a pleasant thing to watch.

"What's going on?" Pan asked as she walked up behind the kai and the namek. She had grown bored of training with Chapuchai who was very fast, but not much of a challenge in terms of strength.

"Er...nothing," King Kai replied unconvincingly.

Pan looked from the kai to Piccolo and then back again. "Look, I know I look young, but I've been around for a while. I think I can handle whatever it is."

"Akira's fighting again," Piccolo said before King Kai could try to come up with another lame reply.

Pan's eyes widened just slightly and then she regained control of herself, "I'm sure he fights all the time in his...occupation. It's no big deal." It obviously was a big deal.

"He just became a Super Saiyan," King Kai announced. If she said she could handle it, he would let her handle it.

"A Super Saiyan? Why would he do that? Is he fighting another clone?" Akira was pretty strong; Pan didn't think that there was anything in the universe that was strong enough for him to actually need to become a Super Saiyan to defeat it.

"No, Earth is in just as bad of shape as ever and Akira isn't anywhere near it." The kai thought for a moment and then said, "He doesn't need to be a Super Saiyan to beat the people he's fighting...actually, I think he's gone to the second level now."

And then Pan knew what Akira was doing. He was slaughtering his enemies. Whether they deserved it or not, they were going to die, probably in a very unpleasant way. It frightened her that in his grief and pain Akira had become so consumed by darkness.

She swallowed hard and turned away from them so they wouldn't see her tears. She was supposed to be past this. She was supposed to have accepted the way things turned out. In her head she knew that it hadn't been her fault, that there was no way for her to have known what was happening or that Akira wasn't the one that really killed her. She had told him she hated him and at that moment she had, because all of the information she knew had pointed to him as the guilty party. But she had been wrong.

Very wrong.

And now she didn't know if Akira did what he did because of what she had said or because of the fact that everything he had cared about had been stripped away from him. In his situation she might have even done the same thing.

But that didn't stop the pain of knowing that the man she still loved was no longer the man he had been.

ooo

Akira took in the carnage all around him and let a cruel smile play across his lips as this golden aura faded and his hair returned to its natural black color. The so-called elite crews had barely lasted five minutes and he had tried to take his time with them.

It had felt wonderful to finally transform into a Super Saiyan again, like stretching out after being in a cramped space for too long. He had almost feared that he wouldn't remember how, but when the time came, it had been just like riding a bike.

Of course he had never learned to ride a bike, but if he had, he was sure that he would be able to get back on one and ride it even after many years.

Now there was only one thing left for him to do, and then he would get his chance to revive his family and friends. One more chore and then he would learn if this long mission of his would be a success or a failure. After that, he would kill the Arlean and then take his place in hell where he belonged. Maybe King Yemma would give him a nice warm spot in between the Arlean and Heata, that would be a fitting punishment for him after all the misery he'd caused over the years.

He stepped over a groaning body and walked towards his ship. He'd left most of them alive, thinking that it would be appropriate for a group of murderers, who prided themselves on the pain they put others through, to die as slowly as possible. None of them would live; he'd made sure of that. They'd either die from hypothermia, or starvation, or blood loss, or fall victim to the remaining Llumians who were still in their cities waiting to learn if they would be conquered this time or not.

Akira sat down in the pod and breathed a sigh of relief as it closed around him and rocketed him into space.

_'Almost done.'_

He calmly checked all the systems, wanting to make sure that everything was perfect before the ship forced him into hibernation. It all came back normal, as it always did, so the saiyan leaned back in his seat and prepared for the nightmares that always assaulted him while he slept. At least this time there'd be some fun to be had when he awoke.

Just as he closed his eyes, he noticed a strange flashing light. Akira's eyes snapped open and then widened in fear. His hand flew to his forehead before he'd even thought through what he was going to do.

_'Please be by yourself,'_ was the last thing that went through his mind before the space pod exploded.

o

o

A/N: 'Jouten' means 'Supreme Being' in Japanese. Trinsan's _Dominion: Reprise_ uses the same word for a God that exists above the kais. It wasn't something I had planned on until I was writing the scene with Cypress and Akira, but now that it's there, I might include it a little more in the story (not a lot of course, this is DBZ not Theology 101). I've just always thought there was probably something higher than the kais since they aren't terribly powerful (physically or any other way). The guy that Pan had just finished sparing with, 'Chapuchai,' was a participant in the Other World Tournament that Goku competed in. He was the little short guy with a beard that ran around really fast (so fast that he wore himself out, if I remember correctly).

**A/N**: Sorry this chapter wasn't very long; like I said in the last chapter, these two were originally just one. Also, don't be expecting some sort of epic battle between Akira and Heata, I mean, Akira's way stronger than Goku was when he beat Freiza and I don't think Heata is even going to be as strong as his cousin. That fight is just going to be one of several mild fights leading up to the conclusive battle with the Arlean. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter despite its brevity.

Nasuren: Sorry, I didn't see your review for chapter 39 until after I'd already posted chapter 40. I haven't seen all of GT, so I don't know if anyone ever says that Goku is full grown as a SSJ4 because he's stronger than the dragon, but regardless, I don't think that has anything to do with whether or not a dragon could make a wish that affects a different timeline (and it's really a mute point anyway). As for me 'ripping off' Bardock's scars and attitude, I'll have to take your word for it, but it wasn't intentional. It's been about four or five years since I've seen the Bardock special. I looked up a picture of him online and he does have a scar on his cheek, but I imagine people who are warriors by trade probably pick up scars from time to time (Yamcha, Vegeta, Mirai Gohan, etc); in this case though, the scar came from the time that Pan punched him after saying she hated him.

Nadz: I was going to just gloss over all the planets Akira's helped wipe out, but now that you mentioned it, I like the idea of a flashback about one of his earlier missions. If I can find a good way of working it in, I have a pretty good one thought up already. Thanks for the idea.

Toni the Mink: I see what you mean, but Akira's time spent under Heata was rather important in establishing how far he's willing to go to get what he wants. Don't worry though; it's over after the next chapter.


	42. Loose Ends

**Chapter 42: Loose Ends**

o

A small message flashed up on Heata's computer screen, alerting him to the fact that Kanata ship had self destructed.

'_Hmmm,'_ the changeling mused to himself, _'He was able to defeat my elites after all, his power was even greater than I thought.'_

Not that it mattered now. Kanata was dead and there was no one else who even approached Heata's power level. The changeling could rule his empire for the rest of his life without much fear of a possible threat existing within his own ranks.

ooo

Akira materialized on the grassy fields and immediately collapsed to the ground closing his eyes against the pain that was raging through his body and greedily sucking in the sweet air. Tiny ice crystals had formed on his skin and hair, souvenirs of the brief second he'd spent in the vacuum of space, and every nerve in his body felt like it was on fire. He'd only paid a small amount of attention in his science classes in high school, but he remembered hearing that if a person were to be in space without a spacesuit, their blood would vaporize. Akira wondered if that was why he felt the way he did now. Probably the only reason he was even alive was because a saiyan's body was built to handle more stress than the average humans.

"Akira?"

He froze, unable to even pull in another breath. He hadn't heard that name in a decade and he certainly didn't want to hear it now. Naturally he'd known that they would be here and that they wouldn't miss the sight of him suddenly appearing, but he'd hoped they'd ignore him long enough for him to recover and escape. He could sense them all, his friends were all very close, but Piccolo and King Kai felt like they were almost standing on top of him…and Pan was not far away.

"Akira," King Kai said again, "What are you doing here?"

The saiyan opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. What could he possibly say to them now? They would know what he had done, would be able to see the Llumian blood that covered his armor and body, could he really take the look in their eyes when they saw him like this?

"I'm sorry," he whispered, "I didn't have any other choice."

Akira heard a small gasp and knew that the one person he truly hoped to avoid had spotted him. In a flash his fingers were at his forehead and then he vanished.

ooo

Heata sighed contentedly as he turned off his light and climbed into bed. His large bedroom was his place of solace, nothing and no one could ever bother him once he was inside. His room was sound proof and his guards all knew that once he retired he was not to be disturbed unless it was a true emergency, anything less would result in immediate death.

The Palace City of Heata #00 was located close to a fault line and had occasional earthquakes. The buildings had all been built to withstand even the most powerful quake, but Heata's room was designed to ride out an earthquake without even trembling. The room actually wasn't attached to the rest of the building, nor did it rest on the foundation. It was held up by respulsor jets so regardless of what the ground did, the room remained perfectly still.

Unfortunately for Heata, the room was built too perfectly. It blocked out the sounds of the guards and servants moving about the palace, but it also blocked out their screams of terror. It remained perfectly still regardless of the strength of the earthquake that struck the city, but it also did not move when the ground shook for other reasons.

ooo

"Captain Kanata?" asked one of two technicians who were standing near the space pods when Akira appeared next to him out of thin air. "What are you doing in here?"

Akira smiled cruelly, "I'm doing something I should have done a long time ago," he replied. He pointed his finger at the alien and fired a hole through his chest. The other technician let out a small squawk of surprise before he too fell to the ground with a smoking hole in his body.

The saiyan stepped over their bodies and calmly walked away, heading towards the large power level that represented the beginning of the end of his long journey.

ooo

The guards monitoring the security cameras that were positioned throughout the palace didn't notice the problem right away. The attack was happening so quickly that if they blinked or happened to be looking at the wrong monitor at the wrong time they completely missed the action. It wasn't until one of them noticed that several guards were out of position that they began to suspect trouble.

Shortly after the initial discovery of missing guards was noticed, another saw a long streak of green running down one of the halls and at the end of the streak half of a guards body could be seen, the other half was no where to be found.

"Alert Lord Heata!" the supervisor shouted as her eyes widened in fear, "We are under attack!" Before anyone could activate the communicator, a figure appeared on the screen that showed the door to the surveillance room. The guards inside turned toward the door just in time to see an enormous ki ball flying at them.

The entire palace, except for one room, shook violently, but most of the guards dismissed it as another earthquake. There had been several tremors over the last few minutes, but no one had contacted them to let them know if it was anything more than a natural phenomena.

No one was left alive to warn them.

ooo

Alvast-Doods and his brother Noodlottig were standing guard at the entrance to Heata's personal wing of his palace. They had been promoted to the spot only a few days ago and were eagerly awaiting the moment when one of the servants accidentally took a wrong turn and let the two guards show off their new found authority. So far, unfortunately, no servant had made a mistake, but the two fighters kept a sharp eye out anyway.

Guard duty was boring to say the least, everyone knew that Heata was the most powerful being in this section of the galaxy and none were foolish enough to try to oppose him. Many of the Royal Guards secretly wondered why the changeling even felt it necessary to employ as many guards as he did, but the pay was good, so they would never voice their thoughts out loud. The guards simply entertained themselves during their shift by picking on anyone with a lower rank or power level than themselves and bragging about exploits that had probably not really happened.

As the two aliens' eyes scanned the hall they saw a large figure making his way towards them, both quickly jumped to attention as their immediate superior stopped and inspected them.

"Anything unusual tonight?" Captain Nai Niku asked.

"Sir, no sir," Noodlottig replied quickly.

"Good, car—" Nai Niku stopped suddenly as the ground shook slightly beneath their feet. For a second all three scouters lit up and displayed impossible numbers, but then returned to normal as though nothing had happened. "Damn thing!" Nai Niku complained, "It's been acting up all night; probably just got jostled during one of the quakes."

The two nodded, but said nothing, hoping that their captain would leave so they could get back to relaxing and enjoying their evening.

Just as Nai Niku started to continue his path down the hall, another figure appeared. This one looked human, though from the distance he appeared to be wearing strangely colored clothing that was neither a servant's nor a guard's uniform.

"Halt! Who goes there?" Alvast-Doods called out, wanting to make a good impression in front of his commander.

The stranger continued walking as though he hadn't even heard the alien yell at him.

"Stop where you are or we'll destroy you!" Noodlottig added.

As the stranger drew closer, it became obvious that his clothing was not multicolored; it was simply covered in different colored liquids which were dripping onto the floor, leaving a small trail behind him.

The three guards' eyes widened as realization struck. The stranger was one of the Elites, Kanata, and they had just threatened him.

"Captain Kanata sir! I apologize; we didn't realize it was you. We weren't aware that you had already returned," Nai Niku said quickly, his eyes glued to the strange fluids dripping off the saiyan's armor.

Akira did not respond, but an evil grin spread across his face as he neared them.

"Sir?" Nai Niku asked uncertainly, "Are you alright sir?" Then his eyes opened wide as he realized what the fluids were. Blood, lots and lots of blood.

Akira's hand shot forward and ripped out the alien's throat, showering the hallway in blood. Alvast-Doods and Noodlottig were frozen in fear and shock, they barely managed to turn and run before their heads were removed from their bodies.

Akira didn't even give them a second thought as he continued on his path to Heata quarters. He could have just used instant transmission to get there, but after spending ten years with these vermin he planned on killing off as many of them as he could before he left. It might not make up for ten years of planet purging, but it was a start.

Besides, it was fun.

ooo

"Sleeping well?" a voice called out from the still darkness of Heata's bedroom.

"Lights on!" the changeling called out, instantly awake. He looked around the room, searching for the intruder, but no one was there. Heata waited for several more minutes before deciding that it must have been a dream. He once again ordered the computer to turn the lights off and lay back down, though he was no where near as relaxed as he had been the first time.

"Don't you have trouble sleeping, knowing how many people are dead because of you?" the voice asked as soon as it was dark again.

Once again Heata was up and the lights were on, but once again the room appeared to be empty. This time the slightly unnerved changeling grabbed a scouter off his desk and scanned the room, but there were no power levels present anywhere near him.

Not even from his guards.

This troubled Heata greatly as the lights went off for a third time, this time the changeling did not relax. Someone was playing a joke on him and when he figured out who it was, they wouldn't find it so funny anymore. He waited patiently, knowing that the voice would return and when it did, he would strike.

"…I know I do, _my lord_."

The changeling rushed towards the direction of the noise, but all he hit was air.

"Show yourself!" Heata roared looking wildly about the room, "Stop playing this childish game and come out of hiding."

"Lights on," the voice said calmly. The lights came on in the room and Heata spotted Akira leaning against the door to the room.

"Kanata? No…you can't be him, he's dead."

"Apparently your data is slightly outdated," Akira replied with a small grin.

Heata stared at the saiyan for a moment and then asked, "Why did you come back? Obviously you found out about the bomb on your ship; with the ship destroyed I never would have known if you lived, you could have gone anywhere you wanted."

"You haven't given me my payment for defeating Llum yet," Akira replied with a shrug.

"You always were foolish," Heata said as he calmly walked towards a cabinet and poured himself a glass of wine, furtively picking up a communicator at the same time. "I always knew you'd turn on me sooner or later. Surely you must know that you have no hope of defeating me? It would be suicide to even try."

"I'm sure," Akira said with a small chuckle. "Tell me, why did you put out a bounty on the saiyans?"

The changeling was slightly confused by the question; no one had ever collected on the bounty and, as far as Heata's scouts were able to learn, no one had seen a saiyan in many years. "I was merely getting rid of a potential nuisance."

"No doubt trying to learn from your uncle and cousin's mistake, right?"

Heata was suddenly very on guard, the conversation had taken a rather unexpected turn. "Indeed," he replied coolly.

"Did you ever wonder why I never let your doctors near me or stepped foot in your rejuvenation tanks?" Akira was smiling now. "Did it ever occur to you that it might be because I knew the moment I was examined or treated they would know just what I was?"

"You're trying to say that _you're_ a saiyan?" Heata nearly burst out laughing.

"No, I'm _the_ saiyan. The last saiyan," the smile was gone, replaced by barely controlled fury.

"Well, I suppose I was worried over nothing then," Heata said as he activated the communicator, "Guards, get in here!"

There was no answer.

Heata tried again, "Captain Chegaoo!"

The room remained still, no guards answered the call.

"Is this the guy you're looking for?" Akira asked as he forced himself to calm down. He opened the door to Heata's room, reached for something on the floor behind it and then tossed a fairly large object at Heata which landed with a splat at the ruler's feet.

The changeling looked down in shock at the sight of the captain of the Royal Guard's head and spinal cord oozing blood all over the beautiful carpet of the room.

"Well," Heata said with a look of new found respect on his face, "I underestimated you. It takes a truly twisted and perverse person to do something like this. It's almost going to be a shame to kill you." A white aura flowed around the changeling as he dropped into his fighting stance.

"You're a fool if you actually think you stand a chance against me," Akira said with a smirk as golden light began to sparkle around him, "I won't even break a sweat against someone as weak as you." He was engulfed in a burning flame of golden energy as he transformed.

Heata stepped back in shock at the sudden change in his enemy. "H,how is this possible?" he asked.

"This is the transformation that brought about the end of your uncle and cousin, I suppose it's fitting that all of your family meet the same fate."

The changeling roared in rage and rushed forward as he threw a punch at Akira. The blow passed right through the golden haired warrior.

Heata stared at the saiyan in surprise and then leapt to the other side of the room. For a moment neither said a thing and then Heata began to chuckle.

"How incredibly amusing you are," the changeling said, "I truly am glad you weren't killed when you pod was destroyed, killing you this way will be so much more fun." He squatted slightly and a strained expression came over his face.

"You're fooling yourself if you honestly think that there's anything you can do to save your life at this point," Akira said with a grin.

Heata ignored him as he grew larger and more muscular; his horns lengthened and curved upwards looking more like the horns of a bull on Earth. Akira could feel the changelings power rise drastically, but it was still a long ways off from being anything he had to worry about.

The large alien began to laugh in a deeper voice than he'd had before, "Well little saiyan, what do you think now?"

"Is that all the power you have?" Akira asked, "I knew a couple of old men on Earth who could have taken you."

Heata charged forward once again and slammed his fist into Akira's face. The young man didn't move or even blink, the blow wasn't even enough to make him turn his head.

Heata's mouth fell open. "No, t, that's impossible…" he gasped.

Akira didn't respond, his fist just shot forward and buried itself in the changeling's stomach.

Heata gasped and then looked down as his sticky, purple blood seeped out of his body and covered the saiyan's arm. He took a step back, wincing as Akira's hand slipped out of the wound, and then turned to run.

Akira was already standing on the other side of him, his arms folded across his chest and a smug expression on his face.

"Are you going somewhere?" he asked calmly. "We have unfinished business, remember?"

Heata backed away slowly. "Please…" the changeling whispered, "I've done nothing wrong, why do this to me?"

"Because of you millions of people are dead or living in slavery. How can you say you've done nothing wrong?"

"Because of _me_?" the changeling smiled, "You aren't so innocent yourself. You killed plenty of those people you're so concerned about."

"I know," Akira said quietly, "and one day I will answer for those crimes, but not yet, not until I've fixed things."

Confusion filled Heata's face, momentarily pushing away the fear, "What are you talking about?"

The saiyan smiled as lightening began to crackle around his golden aura. He shot forward, drove both hands into Heata's chest, and ripped out the changeling's two hearts as he was drenched in purple blood. The once mighty warlord collapsed to the ground as his life drained out of him.

Akira looked down at the defeated alien and sighed, "Keep a spot warm for me in hell," he said as he fired a ki blast that vaporized the changeling.

o

o

**A/N:** Alvast Doods and Noodlottig are Dutch for 'already dead' and 'ill-fated' respectfully; Nai Niku is Japanese for 'dead meat.' I thought they made for funny names for characters I introduced just so I could kill them off a few seconds later.

**A/N**: Okay, so first of all I'm sorry this took so long and second of all I'm really sorry if it sucked. I went through a bit of writer's block and had to just set this aside and ignore the computer for about a week. Now that I'm back, I'm pretty sure that this was one of my worst chapters. It's hard writing fight scenes were one person is so outclassed it's absurd and consequently this chapter went through several different versions before I finally just said, 'screw it, I just want to be done, I don't care if it sucks.' Anyway, sorry again, but the next chapter should be a lot better (it's a chapter I've been wanting to write for a long time).

Draco the Destroyer: It's pretty much impossible to offend me, so you don't need to worry about it. Sorry I didn't respond right away about how strong Heata was, but since it was going to be dealt with in later chapters, I figured I leave it for you to figure out.

Nasuren: I've read Children of the Mind several times. I think the Ender Quartet is one of the greatest series of sci-fi books there is (though Ender's Game is my favorite of the four). However, I won't use Mr. Card's (or Mr. Einstein's, for that matter) theory on near speed of light space travel and its effects on people. If this were real life, you'd be right, Akira would be only a little older than he was when he left Earth, but in DBZ that whole thing is just sort of ignored, and so I have the luxury of ignoring it as well.

Courtney: Yeah, Cypress did have a bit of a thing for Akira, but what I found kind of surprising (especially since I wrote it) when I read over it again was that it I kind of think Akira would have had a thing for her, were it not for the whole Pan-thing.


	43. The Change

**Chapter 43: The Change**

o

The low rumbling sound of thunder awoke Pan from a wonderful dream in which she had not spent the last three nights fruitlessly looking for a murderer and had instead spent her time snuggled up next to Akira in blissful sleep. As she groaned and sat up she realized that not only was it just a dream, but the cloudy weather from the day before had turned into a torrential downpour of rain which she would have to walk through on her way to her weightlifting final.

'_Great, just great,'_ she thought as she climbed out of bed and stretched her stiff limbs, wishing again that she had gotten to bed at a decent hour the night before. Her eyes fell upon a crumpled piece of paper lying on her dresser and she froze. It was Akira's note. They were having lunch today. Suddenly the gloomy weather didn't matter; there was something to look forward to after all.

She picked up the note and read it again, as she had every day since he'd left it by her bed after…the incident. The look on his face when she found him in the woods still unnerved her, but not as much as the somewhat cold tone of the note and the lack of a damn 'I love you' at the end of it.

Pan set the note down and sighed, she really needed to get over those three little missing words. She started getting ready for her day, vowing not to dwell on Akira's strange behavior anymore. Besides, it would be better to hear them from him in person than through some note.

Yeah, that was it.

ooo

Akira was already awake and heading toward the bathroom when his alarm went off. Actually, Akira hadn't really gone to sleep. He'd closed his eyes for a couple of seconds the night before and had instantly been treated to a horrifically detailed decapitation of Pan followed by the sight of Vegeta and Bulma being ripped apart.

It didn't seem like that should really count as sleeping.

He stared through blood shot eyes at the reflection of himself in the mirror, it was amazing how horrible he looked after suffering through a week and a half of sleep deprivation. His skin seemed to have turned somewhat grey and greasy and his eyes had heavy bags under them. He looked dead, though when he thought about it, he was pretty sure he'd looked a lot better than this when he actually _was_ dead.

Akira splashed cold water on his face, it didn't really help his appearance, but it made him feel more awake. He exited the bathroom, got dressed, and headed off toward his physics class, dreading his final, but dreading what he had to do afterwards so much more.

ooo

"Excellent work Miss Son."

Pan did her best not to roll her eyes as she pretended to struggle with the supposedly heavy weights she had 'barely' managed to bench press twice. In truth she could have juggled the silly things without the slightest bit of effort, but that might have caused a bit of a scene and, despite how funny it would have been, she really didn't want that. The weightlifting class itself had been a bit of a joke, mostly just some free credits and a chance to hang out with her two roommates and keep them from jumping into the lap of the first well built guy who showed any interest.

After she was done, she waited patiently while Stacy and Zori finished with their final and then the three of them ran home through the rain so they could get Pan looking nice for her date.

Pan usually wasn't much of one for putting on makeup or doing anything fancy with her hair just to get a guy's attention, but she really wanted things to go well with Akira today. After all the weirdness that had suddenly popped up in their relationship, she thought if she could just have one nice afternoon with him, everything could get back on track. Not that it was off track, of course, she just wanted things to go back to the way they were up until the baseball game.

Zori and Stacy wished her luck as she headed out the door an hour later. She decided to drive since her aura wouldn't completely protect her from the rain and flying would probably mess up her hair. This afternoon really needed to be perfect.

ooo

Akira was also getting ready for the date, though not in the same way Pan was. Akira was sitting in front of the TV, twitching with artificial energy. Several large Starbucks cups that had once been filled with espresso lay at his feet.

His physics final had been a disaster, he'd looked at every single question and been sure that at one point he'd probably known the answer, but was too tired and too worried about the coming horror that was going to be his date with Pan that he hadn't been able to recall a single answer. He'd made up a couple that sounded sort of right and drew a rather good illustration for one of the word problems hoping to get some sympathy credit for adding shading to his meteorite. There wasn't a shadow of a doubt that he'd failed miserably.

Bulma would be pissed, though really that was the least of his concerns at the moment.

At 1:45 he headed out. He'd originally planned on flying there, but with the rain coming down so hard it seemed fitting for him to walk through it, a pseudo-penance for the crime he was about to commit.

ooo

A cloaked man knelt down in a dark alley, trying to get his bearings. It was amazing how different everything looked after all these years and yet it all seemed so familiar. He knew he needed to be somewhere else, actually, there were two places he needed to be, but he'd figure out how to do that in a moment. Right now, all he wanted was to see her alive, even if it was just a glimpse.

She was close, but for the life of him he couldn't think of what she could be doing in this area of the town. It didn't really matter; she was safe for the moment anyway. Once things changed he'd have to keep her close, he knew he couldn't handle seeing her die again.

He heard footsteps and instinctively pushed himself farther back into the shadows. As he gazed out from under his hood, he saw a young man stop and glance into the alley. The boy's face was briefly lit by a street lamp and suddenly the man's blood began to boil.

ooo

As Akira neared the dinner, he passed by a darkened alley. For a moment, he thought he saw something in the shadows peering out at him. Akira stepped closer to the alley and looked around, his curiosity piqued, but there was nothing there. The young man shrugged and turned to go, thinking his exhausted brain must have been playing tricks on him, but then out of the shadows a fist flew forward and slammed into the side of his head, sending him flying across the street and into the side of a small clothing store.

It took Akira a second to pull himself out of the rubble that had once been a display for expensive clothing. As he tossed aside the remains of a mannequin, he gazed back at the alley just as a bulky figure in a long cloak stepped out of the shadows. His attacker's face was partially covered by a hood which hung low, only allowing the man's chin and mouth to be seen, but he moved with the confidence of a warrior.

"What the hell was that all about?" Akira asked as he stepped out of the hole that had been made in the side of the building, doing his best to ignore the wide-eyed stares he was receiving from the two girls at the counter.

The cloaked figure smirked, but did not reply.

"Did you hear me?" Akira asked as he walked towards the man. In his confusion over the unprovoked attack he hadn't even grasped the fact that he could not sense his assailant.

Before he had even crossed half the distance between them, Akira suddenly found all of the air in his lungs rushing out of him. He gasped and looked down as a fist materialized against his stomach. It finally clicked that he was facing more than just a slightly stronger than average street thug.

Akira fell to his knees, clutching his stomach tightly as he tried to inflate his lungs.

"This time I won't let you hurt them, clone," the stranger whispered, anger and hatred dripping from every word. "This time I won't fail." He reached down and grabbed Akira by his hair, pulling him roughly to his feet.

"W, what are you…talking about?" Akira wheezed as oxygen slowly worked its way into his lungs.

The stranger didn't reply, he just kicked the young saiyan in the face, sending him flying down the street to where the stranger was already waiting to deliver a vicious uppercut which sent Akira soaring into the air.

ooo

'_He's late!'_ Pan growled to herself as she looked at the clock on the wall. _'He can almost instantly transport anywhere on the planet, how can he be late?'_

She scowled and began tapping her finger impatiently on the table, slowly drilling a hole through it.

"Excuse me miss, would you like more coffee?" a waitress asked as she passed Pan's table.

"Not until my date gets here!" Pan snapped angrily.

"Bitch," the saiyan's keen ears heard the waitress whisper under her breath as she went to check on her other customers. A part of Pan wanted to go show the lady exactly how much of a bitch she could be, mainly by throwing the poor woman through the wall, but she restrained herself. After all, she had deserved that, it wasn't the waitress's fault that Akira was…

Pan glanced at the clock again.

…ten minutes late and counting.

The young woman fished her cell phone out of her pocket; apparently Akira needed to be reminded of the date. Just as she flipped it open, the ground began to shake.

"Earthquake!" several of the patrons cried out as dishes crashed to the floor and tables tipped over.

"That's no earthquake," Pan whispered as she stood and headed for the door. Suddenly she didn't feel very mad at Akira for being late.

ooo

A second after he had been knocked into the air, Akira came crashing down courtesy of a powerful kick from his cloaked assailant. The young man hit the street with such force that it cracked in every direction, causing a fire hydrant to explode, adding even more water to what was already falling from the sky.

Akira wiped blood from his face as he pulled himself to a kneeling position. His ears were ringing and he couldn't seem to focus his eyes.

"It ends now," the stranger said as he landed in front of the kneeling saiyan, "first you and then your master. I won't let you get away with it a second time."

Akira still didn't have any idea what the cloaked fighter was talking about, but he didn't really care. He'd been kicked around long enough. Things in his life had been spiraling out of control and he just wanted to lash out at something. Anything. This guy was the perfect target.

"See you in hell," the stranger said as his gloved fist rushed down on Akira.

The saiyan's hand shot up and caught the fist. "Not today pal," Akira said with a grin, "You picked the wrong guy to mess with." Golden light erupted around him as the street disintegrated under the enormous outpouring of power.

If the stranger was surprised by the sudden change in Akira, he didn't show it.

"Good, I didn't think you'd let me take you so easily, but the outcome will still be the same as the last time we fought," the man said as his lips pulled back in a smile.

"What _are_ you talking about?" Akira asked as he rose to his feet, momentarily distracted by the man's strange words. "When did we fight?"

Akira's assailant immediately took advantage of the young man's confusion. His leg lashed out as he spun and crouched, sweeping Akira's feet out from under him. Before the saiyan could even put his hand down to rebound off the ground, the man was standing above him with a golden ball of ki in his hand.

Akira's eyes widened in surprise as the attacked came down on him, driving him into the street and then exploding. The overwhelming power of the attack burned and tore at his body in a way he hadn't felt in years. Whoever it was that was attacking him was fighting at a much higher power level than him.

He hadn't even felt the man power up. Actually, he hadn't felt the man at all. The stranger could mask his power just like Akira. Or just like Ammit. Neither were very comforting options.

The young man really didn't want to get back up, but he knew he had to. This guy was powerful, very powerful, and also insane, very insane. Akira had to stop him before his deranged mind decided that someone else was a threat.

Gingerly he pulled himself out of the smoking hole; for the first time that day he was thankful that the cold rain was falling as it cooled his burns. His eyes quickly picked out the cloaked man standing a short distance away, waiting patiently for his enemy to appear.

"Look," Akira said as he summoned more strength into his tired body, "I want to get you the help you need, but if you're going to go around attacking random people, I'm going to have to stop you right here." His golden aura surged around him as he ascended to level two. He'd considered going all out against the man, but he didn't want to hurt him anymore than he had to.

"I see you were playing these fucked up games even this far back," the man said with a scowl. "You needn't hide behind them anymore; I know exactly what you are."

Akira started to ask what the man thought he was, but before the words could come out, he was being pummeled mercilessly. The young man tried to get his hands up to defend himself, but it was like he was stuck in sand; his whole body just seemed to be moving in slow motion compared to his powerful opponent.

He needed to go to the next level, actually, he needed to skip a level, but the stranger wouldn't back off enough for him to concentrate on powering up. It was like the stranger could anticipate his every move and counter it before he even had a chance to put any sort of a plan into action. Even when training with Vegeta, Akira had never been so completely dominated in a fight. If he brought up his arm to block, his attacker would suddenly be attacking him from behind; if he tried to attack, the man would have already blocked it and counterattacked. There was literally nothing he could do accept sit back and take his beating.

Akira would have felt humiliated if he hadn't been so busy trying to keep his head on his shoulders every time the cloaked man landed another thundering blow, which was frighteningly often.

Finally the attacks stopped and Akira slumped forward, for the past few seconds, the man's punches had been the only thing keeping him on his feet. Before he could fall to the ground, a powerful hand latched onto his throat and lifted him into the air.

Akira's hair became black and fell flat as he dropped out of his Super Saiyan form, he didn't even have enough energy to try to struggle against the vice like grip that was crushing his windpipe or block the punches that were once again slamming into his head.

ooo

Pan rushed through the rain looking frantically for the fight that she could intermittently feel. It was like Akira's battle with Ammit all over again, she could feel an occasional attack, but mostly it was like there was nothing happening. It didn't take long for her to see the crowd of people fleeing the area where the battle must be taking place. Pan turned in that direction and run full out, keeping her power level suppressed so as to not give away her presence before she knew what she was up against.

She rounded a corner and gasped at the sight before her. Akira was being held up by his neck and beaten mercilessly by a bulky man. Even in the dim lighting, Pan could see that Akira's clothes were in tatters and blood was running down his body and splashing in the puddles of rain below him.

His body was completely limp.

With a cry of rage she powered up to Super Saiyan and charged the cloaked man, her fist ready to deliver a deadly strike. The air seemed to sizzle with energy as her hand whistled through it toward her target.

The man blocked her attack without even looking up.

Pan dropped to the ground and then sent a kick at his head.

Again the man blocked her attack with ease, but this time he threw Akira away from him. The young man tumbled through the street before coming to a rest with his face half in a puddle.

"P,Pan?" the stranger whispered, causing Pan to pause halfway into her third attempt to land a blow.

The voice was very familiar.

"Is it really you?" the cloaked man continued as he turned toward her.

Pan couldn't see his eyes, but she saw his lip tremble slightly before he bit down on it in the same way Akira did during the few times she'd actually seen him cry. She started to step back in confusion, but before she could, the man fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her stomach as he began to cry.

No, it was more than that she realized, the strange man was sobbing uncontrollably.

o

o

A/N: There was going to be a bit more here, but I liked ending it with that last line. It just seemed like the right spot to stop. So, yippy day we are finally back in the past where everything can be fixed…maybe. Anyway I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please review and let me know what you thought.


	44. Revelation

**Chapter 44: Revelation**

o

Pan's eyes went wide in shock and confusion as the strange man clung desperately to her and sobbed. In her twenty years of life she'd seen many strange things, but this was definitely one of the strangest. She looked around in an almost desperate plea for someone to tell her how to get out of the bizarre situation she now found herself in. The cloaked stranger, who only moments before had been beating the tar out of Akira with ease had collapsed into a sobbing wreck against her stomach. Her hands hung in the air a few inches above the man's head; she had been bringing them up to defend herself just before the man started hugging her and now she didn't know what to do with them. Should she try to comfort him? Should she fight him? Should she stand there feeling uncomfortable and wait for a solution to present itself?

It wasn't really a conscious decision that brought her hands down, more of an instinct to try to comfort someone in obvious emotional pain, but eventually she found her hands gently patting the material covering the man's head. For a few seconds she just ran her hand along the fabric and occasionally patted his back as much as she was able to from her position.

"Um, it'll be okay...I guess" she said softly, feeling rather ridiculous"I'll help you...if I...uh, can."

"I'm so sorry" the man whispered through his sobs"Oh Kami, I'm so sorry...I should have told you...but I was so scared and then you were gone and I didn't know what to do...I didn't know how much I needed you until you were gone...I'm sorry..."

"Oookkkay" Pan said, once again looking around for help that she knew wouldn't be there. Most of the people in the area had gone fled the scene of the battle when it started and those that hadn't weren't likely to venture out into the pouring rain to help her. She could see Akira slowly beginning to come around as he lay in a puddle of blood and water a little ways a way from her, he also wasn't going to be much good to her and actually it might be for the best if he remained unconscious until things got worked out. The strange man didn't seem to want to hurt anyone other than Akira at the moment so perhaps if he stayed down she could get some sort of explanation.

"So, um, is there a particular reason you attacked my boyfriend" she asked lamely.

The man didn't respond, but his sobs eased and he began taking deep breaths as his body tried to calm itself after the outpouring of emotion.

"What's your name" Pan tried again, mostly just trying to get any sort of coherent reply out of him.

"It was all my fault" the man whispered as he continued to ignore her questions. "I was trying to protect you, but I failed..."

"Um" the raven haired girl didn't really know how to respond to that. Apparently this strange man had her confused with someone else. "I forgive you"

She didn't expect a response; she though he'd just ignore her and remain lost in whatever delusion it was that held his mind so entranced. Instead, he rose to his feet, swiftly pulled her into his arms, and kissed her passionately. Desperately.

The action was so unexpected that her mind couldn't even comprehend what was happening at first. By the time it unlocked, a strange instinct in her had already kicked in and she found her mouth responding instinctively to the kiss. It was in that instant that she caught the first whiff of the scent that was filling her nostrils and recognized the kiss that she was receiving. It was a scent she had smelled on countless occasions and a kiss that she had received thousands of times.

It smelled and felt like Akira.

Before she could even begin to work her mind around that little piece of the puzzle, she saw a streak of gold out of the corner of her eye and suddenly the cloaked man was ripped away from her. An irate Akira lifted the stranger above his head and then slammed him down into the concrete.

"It's one thing to attack me for no reason" the young man growled at the prone man"but if you think I'm going to let you do _that_ to Pan, you've got another thing coming." He started to power up a ki blast, but before he completed it, Pan placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Wait" she said quietly"I don't think he's here to hurt us."

"Yeah" Akira asked as he shrugged her hand off his shoulder"Well, he has a funny way of showing it." He finished charging the blast and looked down at his enemy just as the cloaked man charged forward and knocked his hand away. Both fighters' fists rushed towards each other as their battle began anew.

"Stop" Pan yelled at the top of her lungs. The two men's fists came to simultaneous screeching halts mere inches from each other's faces as they turned and looked at her in confusion.

"He's the enemy" both men said at the same time and then turned and glared at each other.

Pan stepped between them and threw her hands into their chests, sending both men stumbling back a few feet.

She turned to the stranger"This is my boyfriend, Akira. We don't want to fight you, but you'd better tell us exactly who you are."

The man was silent for a moment and then a small grin slowly formed on his lips. "The date..." he said as the grin turned into a smile and the smile became a chuckle"With everything that happened, I forgot all about it."

Akira stepped in front of Pan as though to shield her from the apparent insanity of the odd man"What are you talking about"

"The date with Pan, I forgot all about it...it's been so long, but I should have remembered" there was a hint of melancholy in his voice this time as though a long buried pain was trying to resurface.

"How did you know about that" Pan asked"Who _are_ you"

The man reached up and pulled back his hood, fully revealing his face.

"No..." Akira whispered as his eyes widened in shock. "This is some sort of trick"

"I can assure you it's no trick" a slightly older looking Akira replied with a sad smile.

Pan studied the older version of her boyfriend carefully, looking for some sort of mistake that would prove the man was a fake. With the slow aging process of the saiyan race, this Akira looked almost identical to the one she was standing behind, but at the same time they looked very different. The older one's face seemed harder somehow, tighter, as though the carefree-ness that fit so comfortably around her Akira had been stripped away. There were a few scars here and there, though the one on his cheek was the most prominent, but the real change seemed to be in his eyes. The dark orbs were devoid of all the life and joy that made Akira Akira. His eyes seemed haunted and it chilled her to the bone to look at them and think that her Akira could ever have those same eyes. She shuddered and looked away quickly.

"No" Akira said again"you can't be me."

The second Akira stared at his younger counterpart for a moment and then said"Alright, I'll prove it. Bulma told you a few days ago about a time machine, that's how I got here."

Pan saw her Akira stiffen at the words and knew they must be true.

"That's not proof, lots of people could know that" the younger Akira said in a voice that betrayed his uncertainty.

"Only a couple of scientists and guards in a mountain actually, but I have more. You were on your way to break up with Pan when we met."

Pan's eyes widened in shock.

"What is he talking about?" she asked as she stepped around Akira. She looked up into her boyfriend's eyes and instantly noticed the fear and guilt. "You mean he's telling the truth?" Suddenly she didn't care about this stranger anymore. "You were going to break up with me?"

Akira swallowed hard as he saw the hurt in Pan's eyes, "It's not what you think…"

"How can it not be what I think? Is it the truth or not?"

"Well, yes, but it's..." the younger Akira started to say.

"…complicated" his older self finished, his eyes locking onto Pan, "More complicated than he even knows and you don't need to worry about his feelings towards you. Despite what I...uh, he was going to say when he got there, he loves you or at least I did...do. Sorry, this whole past-present thing is a little confusing."

Pan certainly thought so and she was glad someone else did too. Still, she couldn't believe that the man she loved had asked her out just so he could break up with her, but he hadn't even tried to deny it when the truth came out.

/Do you think he's telling the truth/ she thought towards Akira.

/No.Yes./ two replies came back.

"Hey, what do you know, I still remember how to do it," the older version said as the young couple looked up in shock. "I wasn't sure if I'd be able to after a decade of not practicing."

The Akira from the future began to chuckle again, but his eyes were carefully watching his younger counterpart. He didn't have a lot of time to convince his past self or Pan of the truth, but he needed them as his backup during the coming events as they had to believe him as soon as possible. The younger Akira was clearly trapped between his desire for the stranger's claim to be a lie and the undeniable fact that the man in front of him knew a lot more than should be possible if he was lying.

"You still don't believe, do you" elder Akira asked"How about this then, when you think of Bulma in your head you don't call her Bulma...you call her"

"Mom" both men said at the same time.

Pan glanced from one Akira to the other, whatever doubt there had been in her Akira's face it was now gone, replaced with a look that showed he was clearly overwhelmed by the whole thing.

"So, uh, Mirai Ak—"

"Don't call me that!" the older Akira snapped at her and then instantly looked ashamed at his tone, "Sorry, it's just that I'm not that person, that name doesn't apply. I haven't been Akira for a long time…maybe I won't be ever again…" there was almost a sadness in his voice for a second, but then he pushed it down again and said"Just call me Kanata."

Pan translated the word in her head and then raised an eyebrow as she opened her mouth to ask why he chose that name.

"It's a long story," Kanata replied to her unspoken question, "but the important thing is for you both to know that Vegeta and Bulma are going to be killed sometime in the next hour or so unless I stop it and the nameks will be wiped out shortly there after. I don't really know the exact time they die or even who kills them for sure, but I need you two to stop whoever it is."

There was silence for a moment as Akira and Pan let the information sink in.

'_Can there really be something out there strong enough to beat Vegeta?'_ Akira didn't think it was possible, but he also didn't think that he'd go through the trouble of traveling back in time just to lie to himself.

"I'll go protect Bulma, you go to Namek," he told Kanata. "They're my family, they're my responsibility."

Kanata scowled and looked like he might throw a punch at the young man, but he restrained himself. "Quit being an idiot, you don't even know what to expect and you're in no condition to fight. How long has it been since you slept? A week? Two? I wouldn't even send you to Namek if I didn't have to."

Pan let out a small gasp and turned to Akira in surprise, "You haven't slept in a week? Why didn't you say something?"

"I…" Akira didn't want to answer, didn't want to tell her about the images that ran through his mind every time he drifted off for moment.

"He can't sleep," Kanata replied for him, "Every time he closes his eyes he sees himself killing you or another one of his friends."

Pan didn't think this day could get any weirder, but somehow it did. "He dreams about killing me?"

Akira opened his mouth to reply, maybe even to deny it, he wasn't really sure, but no words came out. He was really starting to hate his future self, for some reason the guy seemed to take pleasure in spilling his deepest, darkest secrets.

"It's not his fault," Kanata said, "The same thing that's planning on killing Vegeta and the others is messing with his head."

"The others?" Akira asked in alarm.

The older man closed his eyes and shook his head, "Later. Right now you just need to worry about saving the nameks so the dragonballs are safe."

"Okay, how do we do that?" Pan asked.

"First, Akira needs to be 'debugged'; then you'll have to go to Dende unless you have a senzu bean handy; and after that you'll go to Namek and protect them." Kanata said as he pulled out a small metal box. "Sorry kid," he pointed it at Akira, "this won't be fun, but trust me, it's better than a sword through the gut."

"Huh?" Akira said and then an excruciating pain ripped through his brain. He fell to his knees and screamed as he clutched his head, trying without success to block out the agony.

"What did you do?" Pan screamed as she tried to run to Akira's side. Before she could take more than two steps a powerful hand latched onto her arm and held her fast.

"He's fine, just watch," Kanata commanded sternly.

Pan did her best to calm down and watched as Akira's screams slowly turned into whimpers as he curled up in a little ball on the wet ground. And then she saw a small, silvery something appear on the left side of his head. The object slid off Akira's head and began to move across the ground with surprising speed.

"That is why Akira hasn't been able to sleep," Kanata answered her unasked question. "It's a common slavery device; commands can be beamed straight into the brain, even thoughts if a slaver has the proper equipment." He pointed a finger at the little machine and destroyed it with a ki blast.

"But where did it come from?" Pan asked, "And where did you get that thing that got rid of it?"

Kanata looked her in the eye and for a brief instant she thought she saw something that looked like guilt as he said, "There isn't time to explain, you need to take him to Dende as quick as possible and get him healed. Use Instant Transmission if he can focus enough, if not then just fly fast. When you get to New Namek, there's a possibility that the person you end up fighting will look just like Akira."

"What?"

"The thing that killed Vegeta and everyone else was a clone of me…it made you all think that I was the one that killed you. Keep Akira close no matter what, you need to know that you are dealing with the real one. If you lose sight of him even for a second, don't go near anyone that looks like him until I come for you."

"But…"

"No, I'll explain everything else later, just remember what I said and get going. I have to get to Capsule Corp."

Pan started to ask another question, but the future version of Akira had already put his fingers to his forehead and vanished. She stared at the spot he had been standing for a moment and then scooped up Akira and shot off into the sky, vowing that the next time she saw Kanata she would get some real answers.

ooo

Bulma was busy chopping vegetables when she heard the back door open. She set down her knife and took a peak around the corner, wondering who had braved the storm to visit her.

"Hey, you're pretty early" she said to the young man who had just put down a large duffle bag. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, you're never late when there's free food to be had."

The spiky haired youth flashed a large smile in response.

Bulma looked at him for a moment; he seemed different somehow, more at peace than he had when she'd seen him last.

'_He must be sleeping better,'_ she thought happily.

So, did you come early to spend time with me" her eyes locked onto the bulging bag"or just to wash your clothes" The young man's smile widened slightly and Bulma couldn't help but chuckle at how predictable he was.

"Well, you know where the laundry room is. Have fun." The aqua haired scientist headed back into the kitchen and checked her cookbook for the next step in the recipe. She had just found her spot when she felt something on her neck; she turned and jumped in surprise.

"Oh Kami, you scared the crap out of me" she said to the young man who was standing entirely too close for comfort. "Um, I don't know what they've been teaching you at college, but there is still such a thing as personal spa—"

o

o

**A/N: **Yay, another good cliffhanger ending. I feel I should apologize over the excessive amounts of talking in this chapter. I tried writing it without all the explanations and what not, but it just didn't seem to work right. It's kind of embarrassing really, because I've written reviews for several stories telling the author not to repeat a bunch of stuff the reader already knows as it tends to be boring and a bit tedious. Well, I'm man enough to take my own medicine, if you thought it was boring feel free to tell me, I won't be offended or anything. The next chapter will have at least one fight maybe two if the mood strikes me, so that will hopefully make up for this chapter. Anyway, write a review and let me know what you thought.


	45. To Change the Future Part One

**Chapter 45: To Change the Future Part One**

o

Pan's aura burned brightly around her and Akira as she flew towards the Lookout through the rain and clouds. The young man was partially conscious after being freed from the enslaving device by his future self, but was still in no shape to teleport them to Dende or even keep himself in the air.

Pan's grip tightened around his waist slightly as she thought about Kanata, 'The Other.' She wasn't completely sure why, but there was something about him that unnerved her. Part of it was, without a doubt, the hallow look in his eyes, but it was even more than that. There was a bit of a ruthlessness to him that she couldn't quite understand. The way he just casually activated the device that drove Akira to his knees in pain without warning, the unprovoked attack, the sight of him holding an unconscious Akira up by his neck and trying to beat the life out of him, they were all so out of character with her Akira that it was frightening. She'd seen Akira lose control both when he was fighting Ammit and again when she found him next to the remains of a deer in the woods; both times were frightening, but this Akira, the other Akira, wasn't out of control. He just didn't care.

And that, she realized, was what bothered her about the man. He simply didn't seem to care who was hurt by his words or his actions. The ends justified the means.

_'Jumping to conclusions a little fast, aren't we?'_ she mentally chided herself; _'I've known the guy for what? An hour, maybe, and already I've passed judgment on him.'_

She glanced down at Akira and frowned at the bruises on his neck and face. It wasn't really fair to be judging him already, especially when her own feelings were tied so closely to his accidental treatment of Akira, but that didn't mean she had to like what her boyfriend could have (and still might) become.

She shook the thoughts from her mind and focused on the task at hand as Korrin's tall and impossibly thin tower appeared on the horizon. She'd get her answers and maybe change her mind about Kanata as soon as she and Akira had made sure the nameks were all safe.

ooo

"Oh Kami, you scared the crap out of me" Bulma said to the young man who was standing entirely too close for comfort. "Um, I don't know what they've been teaching you at college, but there is still such a thing as personal spa—"

Something sharp pressed lightly against her stomach causing her to stop mid sentence. Bulma looked down in confusion at the knife blade that was just barely touching her; her eyes instinctively followed the blade to the handle that was held tightly in Akira's hand, and then a little farther to a second hand that was holding onto her adopted son's wrist, that hand was attached to a man wearing a baggy cloak. When her eyes finally reached his face she let out a small cry of surprise.

It was a second Akira, but this one was older.

"Hey, long time no see" he whispered to her a second before he pulled the younger Akira away from her and threw him through the wall and out into the rain.

There were very few times in her life that Bulma had been left speechless, not that there weren't times where she should have kept her mouth shut, but usually she either had something witty to say or at least a snide comment to make. As she stared into the older face of Akira she couldn't even form a thought, much less a whole sentence.

"Go get Vegeta and stay with him" the cloaked man commanded. When she continued staring at him without moving he scowled in a way that told her he wasn't used to having to repeat a command, it was the same scowl Vegeta used to give her when he asked her or her father to repair some of his training equipment and they didn't instantly hop to it. She had never seen a look like that on her usually laid back Akira. When she still didn't start moving, he grabbed her by the arm and half threw half pushed her towards the gravity room.

"Go" he yelled, his voice sounded angry, but underneath the anger she could hear a hint of fearful desperation. Her mind finally reengaged itself and she hurried towards Vegeta's gravity room.

Kanata watched her run for a moment and then turned his attention to the clone who was picking himself out of the rubble that had once been a hotdog stand. The owner had been wise enough to run when his stand exploded as a young man was thrown through it. The stories of weird stuff happening around Capsule Corp were legendary; he didn't want to see how this one would turn out.

"Who are you" the clone demanded as he dropped into his fighting stance and glared at Kanata.

"I don't really think that's important, clone" the older saiyan replied with a scowl. "You aren't going to be allowed to hurt them."

"Clone? I'm Akira and that's my house."

"You're a sad imitation, murderer. There's no need to play your games, I already know all about you and your Arlean master."

The clones eyes narrowed and for a second Kanata thought he might try to run. If he had it would be unfortunate because there would be no way to track him afterwards, but then his head shifted slightly to the left as a look of slight confusion passed over his face. Kanata had seen that movement hundreds of times during the last decade; the clone was receiving a transmission through a slave implant.

A moment later the clone looked up and smiled"You know too much for your own good, I guess I'm going to have to eliminate you before I kill off Prince Vegeta and his bitch."

Clone Akira's smile instantly vanished as Kanata suddenly appeared just above him and brought both fists down hard on him, driving him into the asphalt of the street.

"That's my…friend you're talking about" the saiyan from the future growled as he stood over the hole.

The street cracked and then exploded as golden light erupted from with in the clone, Kanata flipped into the air and landed on the other side of the street, dropping instantly into his fighting stance.

"So, what are you then" the golden haired clone asked as he floated out of the enlarged crater. "Another clone? Did the saiyan's somehow learn of our plan"

"Something like that" Kanata said quietly as he also became a Super Saiyan.

The two warriors stared at each other for a moment and then as lighting flashed overhead, they charged forward with fists raised.

ooo

Pan didn't even bother to say hi to Mr. Popo as she ran into the Sky Palace, basically dragging Akira along with her.

"Dende" she called out loudly.

"Pan? What are you doing here" the kami asked as he stepped out of a side room, his eyes quickly took in the sight of Akira leaning heavily on the young woman and looking like he'd been in a pretty major battle. "What happened"

"Um...it's a bit complicated, but I need you to heal Akira. We're kind of in a hurry."

_'When are you not?'_ Dende wondered silently as he helped Pan lay the injured young man on the ground and then began the healing process. Over the years of being the Earth's guardian, his formidable healing powers had grown even stronger so it only took a few seconds before the yellow light faded and all of Akira's wounds had knit themselves back together.

"Now then" the namek said with a pleasant smile"do I get to hear what's happening on my planet or are you going to leave me in the dark"

Pan gave him an extremely brief rundown on the interesting twist her life had taken that day, though she really didn't know all that much to begin with, as well as filled Akira in on what they could possibly be up against when they reached New Namek.

Akira, surprisingly, accepted the news of a homicidal clone without comment. He simply nodded his head and then placed a hand on her shoulder as his other one touched his forehead. In an instant, they were gone, leaving a very confused and very worried Dende hurrying to the edge of the Lookout to watch the events unfolding down below.

ooo

Bulma was about to knock on the gravity room door when it suddenly opened and Vegeta stepped out.

"What's going on woman" the Saiyan Prince demanded.

Bulma opened her mouth to explain the story, but then closed it when she realized she didn't have the foggiest idea what was happening. Her adopted son had tried to stab her and and older looking version of him had stopped him and then threw him through the wall.

"Well" Vegeta looked slightly irritated.

Bulma tried again, but this time was interrupted by a loud crash outside as the sounds of battle began to filter into the house.

Vegeta ran to the large hole in the wall and looked outside in time to see Akira and a cloaked warrior who also looked very familiar shot into the air as they fought. He was about to fly after them to help Akira or at least figure out what was going on when Bulma latched onto his arm and held him tight.

"Please don't go" she whispered.

"What are you talking about? Akira's fighting someone"

"I...I don't..." she stopped herself, took a deep breath and told her husband what had taken place in the kitchen only a few minutes earlier.

ooo

Kanata tilted his head a fraction of an inch to the left and the clone's fist sailed past him even as his own fist was blocked before it could slam into his enemy's face. The two Super Saiyans stood in the middle of the rain soaked road, feet and fists moving in a blur of motion as each tried unsuccessfully to land a significant blow.

Clone Akira's face was creased in concentration as he struggled to keep up with the speed and power of the older man's attacks. Suddenly, he noticed a small smile creep across Kanata's face; he had only a second to look surprised before a knee slammed into his stomach with such force that he was driven into the side of a nearby building.

Before the clone even had a chance to pull himself out of the rubble, Kanata had grabbed him by his shirt, thrown him into the air, and charged after him. The two continued their battle across the cloudy sky, once again in an apparent stalemate, but after the last attack the Clone Akira knew that his opponent was only toying with him.

"I'm sick of your games" he growled angrily as he ascended to the next level.

"It's not my fault you're such a wea—" Kanata's sentence was cut off as the clone's fist was slammed into his gut, doubling him over. Before he could recover, Clone Akira brought both hands down hard on his back, sending him streaking towards the ground.

The older saiyan flipped around just before he hit the ground and landed on his feet; the second he touched the street, he jumped back at an angle, narrowly avoiding being driven into the street by the clone whose foot hit the exact spot Kanata had been a moment before. Now it was Kanata who struggled to keep up with his enemy's attacks. He was able to avoid or block most of them, but was continuously being pushed back and occasionally taking a shot to the face or body.

The two warriors gradually made their way out of the city as their battle continued to rage through the clouds. After hundreds of punches and kicks had been traded, the clone finally managed to land a significant blow, sending Kanata slamming into the grassy plains far below them.

As he climbed to his feet and shook his head to clear it, the clone landed a short distance away and crossed his arms.

"Now that we're out of the city, are you going to start fighting me for real? There aren't any of those pathetic human's around to get hurt, so you can fight freely." Clone Akira said with a smirk.

Kanata smiled back and cracked his neck"I don't care about the humans, I just didn't want Bulma mad at me when she had to explain the body parts scattered all over her lawn."

The clone began to chuckle. "That's a little premature, don't you think? Vegeta's _bitch_ won't be explaining anything to anyone after I open her up like a slaughtered pig."

Kanata's smile faded and his body seemed to tremble slightly at the words.

_The first thing that Akira noticed when he rematerialized after his hasty teleport from his dorm room was the rain that was now splashing down on his head, flattening his normally spiky hair, and then he felt the cold water and mud that was covering and slowly seeping into his nice shoes._

_'Great,' he thought as he looked down, 'Now Bulma's really going to be pissed at me...'_

_It was at this point that he realized he wasn't standing even close to the nice, clean Capsule Corp dome that had been his home for the past three years, nor was he smelling the wonderful scent of Bulma and Icalla's cooking. His eyes widened in confusion at the destruction all around him._

_A few feet away he saw Trunks, Goten, Gohan, and (much to his chagrin) Pan looking down at something on the floor. The young saiyan could see some sort of red coloring on the ground at their feet, but they were blocking too much of his view for him to make out what it was that held their attention._

_"Hey, where are..." his eyes fell upon a picture in a broken frame lying near his feet "...we..."_

_It was a picture of Trunks, Bra, and himself on a recent family vacation, but it couldn't be. That picture was hanging in the hallway leading back to the gravity room._

_Akira slowly looked up and found himself staring into Trunks' grief filled eyes. The lavender haired saiyan stepped slightly to the side and let Akira see what it was that was behind him._

_"No..." Akira whispered as he took in the sight of Vegeta and Bulma's broken bodies. Bulma's face was turned towards him, her eyes still open in surprise and pain. Blood had run off the bodies and mixed with the rain, forming small red rivers which were slowly making their way along the broken floor._

_Akira's whole body felt weak as the shock continued to roll through his system until finally his legs gave out and he fell to his knees. The young man closed his eyes against the sight, but it seemed to be burned into the inside of his eyelids with amazing accuracy. Through the numbness that seemed to have wrapped itself around his whole body he felt tears push their way out from under his squeezed shut eyelids._

_It couldn't be possible. It just couldn't. It had to be another dream, another nightmare. He'd seen images just like this one numerous times during the last week, this had to be just another one. He whispered over and over to himself that it was just another lie, another dream, but deep down he knew this nightmare was very real._

_At some point he became aware of the arms that had wrapped themselves around him in a comforting embrace. His eyes snapped open as he realized it was Pan who was now holding him and instantly wished that they'd remained closed as he was just treated to another dose of the mangled bodies of Vegeta and Bulma._

Kanata looked up at the clone, his eyes burning with hatred as he ascended to the second level. "You killed them once, but I won't let it happen again" he promised.

Clone Akira only had about a half second to look confused before a fist buried itself in his stomach followed quickly by a knee that slammed into his face. The clone was sent flying into a small rock outcropping, reducing it to rubble, but he got back to his feet without hesitation and charged at the older saiyan. The two warriors locked in combat as fist and feet flew at each other faster than the eye could see.

ooo

"Akira! Pan! How good to see you my friends" Mouri said with a smile as he stood and dusted the dirt from his garden off of his pants. "What brings you way out here"

Akira glanced at Pan, who shrugged, before he said"There might be trouble. We need you to have all the nameks come to this village."

"What sort of trouble"

Pan gave him a sad smile and said"The only kind we ever see: end of the universe or at least the extinction of a few races."

Mouri looked slightly confused, but didn't press the issue farther as he went about calling the elders from the other villages and having them bring their people to the main village.

It took a surprisingly short amount of time for all of them to arrive. Nameks were a long lived people who did not reproduce very often and so the population remained fairly small, only a few hundred nameks were ever alive at any one time. Because of this, and because New Namek was so much larger and untamed than Old Namek, the villages had all been built relatively close together; barely a hundred miles separated the villages that were the farthest apart.

Once all the namek villages had arrived, Pan explained what she knew of the situation to them while Akira stood back and tried to sense any sort of unusual power level. He'd been told of the clones so he wasn't expecting to find anything, but he felt like he should at least be doing something. The last time he was on this planet, all but one of the nameks had been killed in an attack because he hadn't been paying attention until it was too late. Though they had all been wished back only a few minutes later, Akira had still felt guilty about it. This time he would not make the same mistake.

"So" one of the elders spoke up as Pan finished explaining"You believe this person who claims to be from the future"

Pan opened her mouth to respond, but before she had the chance, Akira said"He's telling the truth, at least about who he is." The firmness of his voice left no room for doubt.

The namek elders all nodded as they contemplated the situation.

"Is there anything that we can do to help you" Mouri finally said after a moment or two of silence. "It seems that your friend from the future is saving us as well, we will do what ever we can."

"No, I don—" Pan started to say until suddenly she felt an enormous flare up of power just above her.

"Look out" Akira yelled as he transformed and shot into the air to intercept the blast, swatting it away so that it exploded harmlessly over the ocean.

Pan also transformed and dropped into her fighting stance as she turned and saw another Akira hovering high in the air, one hand out in front of him. Despite having heard it straight from the Akira from the future, she still couldn't believe what she was looking at. There was literally no difference between her Akira and the clone; even their clothes were the same though the real Akira's were a bit tattered from his fight with Kanata.

Akira silently floated higher until he was hovering directly in front of his clone. The two warriors stared at each other for a moment before the clone began to snicker.

"So, you figured it out, did you? Were you surprised"

"Why are you doing this" Akira demanded.

"Because my master told me to" the clone replied with a shrug"The saiyans killed his people, so he's getting his revenge. We're just doing what should have been done a long time ago."

"But the nameks haven't done anything to you, they haven't hurt anyone, why attack them"

The clone rolled his eyes"Boy, you're even dumber than the master said. It's not a very good revenge if your enemy just keeps getting wished back to life, now is it? It's nothing personal against them; they just chose the wrong ally." The clone glanced down at Pan standing below and looked almost gleeful"Hey, you even brought your little girlfriend with you! This _is_ going to be fun. Once I kill you, I get to play with her before I get down to the business of wiping out the slugs."

Akira scowled"I won't let you hurt any of them."

The clone continued to smile, clearly not concerned at all by the threat in front of him"Big words from a tired boy; I'm surprised you can even hold yourself in the air. Tell me honestly, did you like those images we stuck in your head? Weren't they just a little bit exciting to watch? My brother is back on Earth right now making some of them come true, you know."

A half second later, an enraged Akira's fist slammed into his clone's face.

ooo

Kanata and the clone he was battling had now moved up to level three and were still going strong, though it would have been obvious to anyone who could follow the fight that Kanata was clearly the better fighter. His moves were smoother, his attacks more precise, and his defense was almost unbreakable. Ten years of constant fighting, even if it was done while he suppressed his true strength, had molded him into a highly efficient warrior and the clone couldn't keep up, regardless of how enthusiastically he threw himself into the battle.

"Were you always this sloppy" Kanata taunted as he easily avoided several wild punches. "I'm actually kind of disappointed, I've been looking forward to this day for ten years and you're barely even a challenge to me"

"Shut up" the clone roared as he charged recklessly forward again.

Kanata smiled and side stepped the attack, kicking Clone Akira's legs out from under him as he stumbled by. The clone hit the ground hard, but rolled to the side in time to avoid a ki blast from his enemy.

"Enough of this" the clone said as he began to power up once again and red fur sprouted all over his body.

The older saiyan watched in mild amusement. Now that he was sure everything would work out and that all of his friends would survive, he let himself feel almost happy. Nothing except the complete restoration of his friends and family in _his_ timeline would truly take away the pain that was buried deep with in him, but the knowledge that he was about to tear this clone to shreds for the second time brought him a very deep sense of satisfaction.

The clone took a deep relaxing breath as his now yellow eyes locked on Kanata. "Well, this fight was interesting, but I have a prince to kill so I can't mess with you anymore." He charged up and fired a powerful ki blast, which Kanata just barely managed to avoid.

The saiyan from the future grinned despite the fact that the blast would have done some serious damage if it had actually hit.

"Before you start writing me off, let me show you what a real Super Saiyan can do." The ground around Kanata began to shake as he powered up, his muscles bulged under the strain of the power that was surging through them and his teeth gnashed together. Large rocks were ripped out of the ground and floated around him as he pushed his power level higher and higher until finally...

ooo

"Is this really necessary" Trunks asked as Icalla half-led, half-dragged him into another wine store that claimed (as the last four they'd visited had) that it had the best selection in all of Satan City.

"Come on, you know I want tonight to be perfect" the curly haired brunette responded. "This is the first time we've had a real dinner with your parents, Akira, and Bra all at the same time since we got engaged and with Akira and Bra's school and social schedules, we might not get another chance like this for a long time."

The purple haired saiyan sighed"Alright, alright, but this is the last place we're going to. It they don't have what you're looking for, we'll just get the next best thing, deal"

Icalla rolled her eyes, but treated him to a warm smile"How can the son of the richest woman in the world have so little appreciation of the finer things in life"

Trunks shrugged"What can I say, I'm Vegeta's son. And this kind of thing is a little..." he cringed slightly as though expecting a blow"boring."

Icalla didn't hit him; she wasn't the violent type and certainly didn't have the power to do any damage to a man of Trunks' strength anyway. Besides, there were much better ways of getting even, like making him go into five wine stores inside of an hour for instance. "Well, to hear your mom talk, Vegeta appreciates _some_ of the finer things..."

Trunks groaned"I really don't want to know."

Icalla, perhaps in a bit of retaliation for him having called their shopping trip 'boring,' smiled and said"Oh, you don't think it's cute that even as they grow older your parents still...er, _hunger_ for each other—"

"Enough, enough" Trunks called out, looking a little green in the face as he hurried down one of the aisles lined with bottles. "Let's get your wine"

He had taken only about four steps when his back suddenly stiffened and he whirled around, his eyes wide with confusion.

"Trunks" Icalla asked with a slightly worried look on her face. "What's wrong"

"It's Akira...but...he wouldn't do that..." Trunks' brow was furrowed as he tried to concentrate on the life force he had briefly felt. When Akira trained with Vegeta the two of them had something of an unspoken agreement that the young man wouldn't hide his ki, and usually Akira honored that unless he was fairing particularly poorly in a sparring match. For some reason though, this felt very different for Trunks. For one thing, the power up wasn't anywhere close to where Vegeta's ki could easily be felt. On top of that, it had felt more like a very powerful ki blast, not the kind of thing that any of the Z Fighters used when they were training.

That could only mean one thing though it didn't really make much sense: Akira was in some sort of fight and if he'd felt the need to use that much power, it must be bad. Trunks did find it strange that he couldn't feel the power level of any enemies, but he would just have to figure that out later.

"SorryIgottogo.Theremightbetrouble.Iloveyou,bye" he yelled as he sped out of the store so fast the wind knocked several very expensive bottles off the shelf as he ran by.

Icalla stared open mouthed after him until she felt a firm tap on her shoulder. She turned and looked over her shoulder at the stern-faced, older woman.

"I hope you plan on paying for those bottles your friend just broke young lady" the woman said with a scowl.

Icalla scowled right back, more than a little annoyed at the 'young lady' comment; what was she, twelve"Alright" she said with a sigh as she fished her credit card out of her purse"Put it on this." She glanced at the bottles on the shelf in front of her and grabbed the first thing that looked remotely good.

"Put this on there too" she added to the rude sales woman. _'Trunks Briefs you are so dead when I see you again!'_ she thought, though a part of her was worried about the way he'd rushed out. That was very unlike him, which meant he wasn't just trying to get out of shopping, there was probably trouble somewhere.

ooo

"Daddy! Daddy! Come look at fha elapants" Kumo called out excitedly as he ran at full speed out the door to where Goten was running through some basic training exercises. "The're singin'"

"Wow" Goten said as he lifted his little boy up onto his shoulders"Singing elephants? Are you sure"

"Yeah" Kumo said with a big smile"and dancin' too"

"Dancing too? Whoa" Goten ducked low so Kumo wouldn't put yet another hole in the wall as they walked through the doorway and headed to where the little boy watched his afternoon movie that usually (hopefully) would lead to an afternoon nap.

"Mommy" Kumo called out as his dad set him down on the pile of pillows that were propped up in front of the television.

"Kumo, honey, Mommy's seen the singing elephants everyday this week" Valese called out from the kitchen. "I need to get dinner started or you, daddy, and Uncle Gohan will be very hungry tonight."

"Gohan's coming to dinner" Goten asked as he walked to the kitchen and kissed a slightly flour covered Valese on the cheek.

"Yeah, Videl called the other day and suggested it. Now go watch the movie with our little terror or better yet take him outside and wear him out"

"Alright, outside it i—" Goten's voice broke off as he suddenly gasped. In the living room, Kumo started crying.

"What is it" Valese asked with a slightly worried voice.

"I..." Goten's eyes shifted back and forth as he sorted through the different power levels that he suddenly could feel. All of them were converging on the first one that he'd felt, the one that felt like Akira. "I got to go, sorry." He was out the door before Valese even had a chance to say anything to him.

The beautiful brunette watched until her husband was only a dot in the distance and then went into the living room to comfort her son.

"Kumo, what's wrong" she asked as he hugged her tightly and shivered.

"Scared" the little boy replied softly"scared..."

Valese glanced out the window, her eyes filled with concern. _'Goten, you better be safe.'_

ooo

The battle between the two Akira's was raging back and forth across the sky of New Namek. Each fighter had pushed themselves to level two and where nearing the point where they would go even higher.

Pan was doing her best to keep her eyes on the fight even though neither warrior was giving off a ki signature that could be felt so it was nearly impossible to follow everything. Still, she had to make sure she didn't lose sight of Akira for long or she would run the risk of not knowing which one was the clone and which one was her boyfriend. At least for the moment her Akira was the one with little more than rags for a shirt, courtesy of his future self.

On top of keeping track of Akira she had to make sure that no stray ki blasts hit anywhere near the namek village. It would be inexcusable to have come all this way only to let their friends die because of a simple misfire.

High above her, Akira was moving as quickly as he could at this level. The clone was an excellent fighter, of that he was certain. Every move his opponent made seemed to be apart of some sort of strategy even when he was forced to go on the defensive. Fortunately for the young saiyan, after three years of training with Vegeta, he wasn't too shabby either.

The problem for Akira was that even though Dende had healed him, he still hadn't slept in a long time and that wasn't something the kami could fix. At the moment, adrenaline was pumping through him and keeping him fresh, but adrenaline could only do so much and he could feel the fatigue beginning to creep into his muscles.

"What's the matter _brother_? You really aren't making a good showing of yourself" the clone taunted as he sent Akira crashing into the ground.

A second later the Super Saiyan was back on his feet and charging into the air to resume the fight, but again he could feel his energy slipping away more and more quickly. If he didn't end the fight fairly soon, he might not have the strength to end it at all.

"Enough of this" Akira growled as he and the clone circled each other"it's time to fight for real." His aura swirled around him as he began to power up, skipping level three all together and going straight to level four.

The clone smirked and did the same.

ooo

Kanata stopped powering up and looked down at himself in confusion.

_'What the hell? It's not supposed to be this hard to transform!'_

"Hmm" the clone mused with a triumphant smile"That _is_ impressive" He shot forward and kicked Kanata into the side of a nearby mountain, driving the older man all the way through it and out the other side.

Kanata lay on the ground for a moment as he spit out the blood that was pooling in his mouth, then he slowly pulled himself to his feet with a groan. As soon as he was up he dropped into his fighting stance and tried to look confident though he was suddenly feeling anything but.

_'Why didn't it work?'_ he asked himself desperately as his eyes searched for the attack he knew would be coming sooner or later. _'I know I'm strong enough to do it and I can't lose that ability like Vegeta did...can I?'_

Suddenly a new thought hit him and he reached back and rubbed the spot where his tail had once connected to the rest of his body, there was a large scar there and sometimes he could almost feel his tail swishing behind him even though he knew it wasn't there.

_'Oh shit...'_ he thought just before a ki attack hit him in the back and sent him plowing into the mountain once again.

o

o

**A/N: **Well, I'm glad that most of you didn't find the last chapter too boring (even if I disagree). Sorry about not updating for a while, these fights just didn't come to me as quickly as they have in the past (plus there was that whole Super Bowl thing that wiped out a Sunday for me). This chapter was going to be shorter, but I figured that I owed you all something for not updating very quickly after the last cliffhanger and since this one ended with yet another cliff hanger, I'll be updating within the next few days. Anyway, thanks for the reviews (over 200 more than my last story!). Please let me know what you thought.

donkeykong27: No, I don't think it will be that sort of scene at the end (though I guess there will be a few clones so there will be some similarities). I haven't quite decided how it will all play out, but it's starting to come together in my mind.

Courtney: Hehe, yeah, the kissing thing was kind of funny to write. I almost had the previous chapter end with that instead of just with 'Kanata' crying. Time travel generally hurts my brain, but at least with separate timelines-thing it's slightly less confusing.

Draco the Destroyer: I'm glad at least someone agreed with me about that chapter being boring. Sorry about the repeated scenes, there really shouldn't be anymore after this chapter as things are all completely different (the only exception might be 'Kanata' thinking back on Pan or someone else's death).

UGotProblems: Obviously I was just waiting for you to review the last chapter! ;) I usually aim to update about once a week, but things just seemed to keep coming up this week, sorry about the delay.


	46. To Change the Future Part Two

**Chapter 46: To Change the Future Part Two**

o

Gohan had been enjoying the quiet of the afternoon before he and Videl's planned visit to Goten's house when he'd felt the power up from Akira. It was very strange for the younger saiyan to power up like that, especially since he wasn't anywhere close to Vegeta, Trunks, or anyone else that he could possibly have been training with, but more than that, it was the way the power was being called forth. Not the slow, gradual power up that usually accompanied training, but fast and hard. It was something that the Z Fighters usually only did when absolutely necessary. By powering up like that, he was wasting a huge amount of energy unnecessarily and Akira wouldn't do that unless he really needed to.

But even more than that, Gohan realized as he flew out the door with barely a word of explanation to Videl, he had been worried about Akira during the last week or so and (if he wasn't in a fight) this was another thing to add to a growing list of abnormal behavior. He'd heard from Goten that Akira had recently been avoiding Pan and even Bulma had casually mentioned the young man's strange behavior when speaking with Chi-chi a few days ago. The way Chi-chi told it, Bulma had felt confident that Akira wasn't sleeping for some reason. Whether that was actually the case or just the exaggerations of two (slightly) nosy women was hard to say, but when it came to things that could potentially involve his daughter's happiness, Gohan was always very interested.

After all, she might be powerful enough to destroy the planet, but that didn't mean her heart couldn't be broken.

As he flew he could feel Goten just ahead of him and Trunks a little further beyond that. Soon, the two brothers were flying side by side as they continued to make their way towards West Capital.

"Looks like we might be having dinner a little later than expected," Goten said casually as they streaked through the air.

"Any idea what's going on?" Gohan asked.

"Not a clue, but I suppose we'll find out soon enough."

Gohan nodded and continued flying. Suddenly, a thought struck him, _'Where's Pan?'_ He was certain that she would be moving to check on Akira also, but he couldn't sense her anywhere. It was as if she was intentionally suppressing her powers…or else she was unconscious.

Or worse.

Gohan put on a burst of speed and Goten quickly followed suit.

ooo

Kanata came out of his daze and found himself lying on his back under a large pile of boulders. He groaned in pain as he pushed the rocks away and rolled over, pulling off his cloak and the now-cracked armor underneath it. He could feel that his back was burnt badly, even the smallest movement caused it to crack and bleed more than it already was, but still he pushed himself off the ground and got to his feet.

_'How could I make such a stupid mistake?'_ he asked himself. _'I should have tested my powers before starting this fight.'_

The problem was that he knew he had plenty of power to reach level four and even level five. He'd been fighting for a long time and been badly injured more than once so his power level was much higher than it had been when he fought the clone in his own timeline, but with out the transformation, he couldn't really use that power. His body wouldn't be able to handle it in its present state.

He looked for the clone, trying to fight down a slight sense of panic; he needed to buy himself some time to figure out what he was going to do, not freak out over a slight miscalculation. After all he'd spent the last ten years on the battlefield; he'd grown quite good at improvising tactics when the unexpected arose, he just need time to think.

As Kanata glanced around he felt a slight change in the breeze that was blowing across his face and instantly ducked just as a fist sailed over his head. He tried to avoid the next blow, but wasn't nearly fast enough and took a powerful kick to the side. There was a soft crunching sound as the older man's ribs cracked under the force of the blow.

"Not so cocky now, are we" Clone Akira taunted as he delivered a knee to the face of the injured warrior. He raised a fist to slam it down on Kanata, but stopped before he threw the punch and glanced to the west where he could feel three fairly large power levels heading towards them at high speed. "Ah, looks like the rest of the saiyans have noticed our little battle...no matter; they won't get here in time to save you." He turned back to Kanata and his eyes widened as the older man's hands went to either side of his face.

"Solar Flare"

ooo

On the ground below, the nameks and one female saiyan were beginning to feel a little nervous as they saw both Akiras transform into level four Super Saiyans. The nameks had already lost one planet when a Super Saiyan was on it and at the time that Super Saiyan was far weaker than either of the two that now dueled above them.

Pan wished that she'd thought to ask the Akira from the future how it was that he survived his encounters with the clone. If this clone was exactly the same as Akira, what was he supposed to do to win? Akira was a good fighter, but he'd been more of a regular college student than a warrior during the last few years. From the few glimpses of the fight that she had been able to catch, the clone seemed to be about equal with Akira in terms of skills as well as power, maybe even a little better…if she was really honest.

ooo

Twin pairs of yellow eyes locked on each other as the identical fighters grinned.

"I must say that I'm impressed" Akira said"I've never had the chance to fight a Super Saiyan Four."

"I'd rather you didn't use such a filthy phrase to describe me" the clone replied. I may look like a saiyan, but I have nothing to do with you disgusting monkeys."

Before Akira had the chance to ask what the clone was talking about, he found himself dodging punches and kicks at lightening speed. After a moment the two separated once again, breathing slightly heavier than they had been before; each now bleeding from the numerous cuts and scratches that covered their bodies.

Suddenly the clone shot forward again, throwing a ki blast as he raced towards Akira. The young man swatted the blast aside, but took a kick to the face; he stumbled back a few steps, but recovered in time to block Clone Akira's next series of attacks. After blocking and dodging as many of the punches and kicks from the clone as he could, Akira went on the offensive. He drove his enemy back with a quick series of punches and kicks, forcing the clone to change to a more defensive stance, but still not really doing any significant damage.

They separated once again, this time the break lasted only a second before they both charged each other and threw identical punches which both connected and sent them flying in opposite directions. Thus far they were equal in every way.

ooo

Kanata hurried away from the clone who was grabbing at his eyes, trying to clear his vision. If nothing else he might have bought himself enough time for Goten, Gohan, Trunks and Uubu (whom he'd just felt power up and start heading in his direction) to arrive, but given that they knew nothing of the clone, they might unknowingly side with the enemy. That would certainly be an ironic way for his little quest to end, dying at the hands of the people he was trying to raise from the dead in another dimension.

He ducked behind a large outcrop of rocks and took a deep breath. The only chance he really had was to somehow force the transformation. Vegeta could do it with the help of the Brute Ray but at the time he wasn't even capable of reaching Super Saiyan Three. Why shouldn't Kanata be able to do it without the ray?

The saiyan from the future took a deep breath and reached deep within himself, summoning up the power that had been hidden there since the day of his creation. He ground his teeth in pain, it felt like large, sharp rocks where trying to push their way through his veins. The area around him began to shake as his barrier fell away and more and more power rolled off him in waves. His muscles were trembling from the exertion and he felt like he was going to explode from all the energy that was being pushed into his body, but he refused to back off, he had to make it.

He pictured Pan's body when he found it all those years ago in the half destroyed warehouse, Goten and Trunks' mutilated corpses lying in the street shortly after their fight, all of the civilizations he'd left in ruin just for this chance to fix things. It could not have all been in vain. It _would_ not be in vain.

He was going to push through this and soak the ground in this bastard's blood just as he had done ten years ago. His decade of torment was going to be worth it because as soon as he was done with this murderer, he was going to go to Namek and make his wish and his friends were going to be back again. He had to do this!

An image of Pan flashed through his mind. She wasn't bleeding and dying as he'd seen her on that last night, nor looking at him in confusion the way she did a short time ago when he met the Pan from this timeline, but he saw her as he'd last seen _his_ Pan: Glaring angrily at him with hate filled eyes.

"_Don't you dare say that to me! Not now, not ever. You don't know what love is, to you it's just another tool to manipulate with, just like I was,"_ she had said as her eyes locked onto his and at the moment he'd known what she was going to say next, but it didn't make it any easier to hear. _"I hate you."_

Kanata let out a scream of pain and rage as a bright golden column of light erupted around him and shot up into the heavens.

ooo

Akira and the clone met in mid air again and again, neither backing down, neither giving any ground in the slightest until one of them made the smallest of mistakes.

It hadn't started out as a mistake; it could have actually been a perfect move, but either because Akira's body was being slowed by fatigue or because he was just unlucky, he ended up leaving himself wide open for attack. He'd been flying straight at the clone, just as he'd done dozens of times already, but this time instead of attacking the way he had previously, he used the after-image technique, hoping to confuse the clone and give him an opening. As his image passed through the clone he suddenly appeared directly behind his opponent and brought his arms down hard. However, his fists where slightly off target and moved just slowly enough for the clone to see it coming. The clone dodged to the side just enough for Akira's fists to miss and leave him completely off balance.

The Akira Clone didn't hesitate for a second, he reached back and grabbed Akira by his ankles and dragged him to the ground, slamming him face first into the hard dirt. The Super Saiyan tried to pull away from the clone, but before he could he was once again lifted into the air and brought down with earth shattering force. The power behind the blow left Akira slightly dazed and unable to defend himself for a moment to as he was smashed into the ground over and over.

It wasn't until he was bloodied and bruised that Akira was able to pull himself together enough to fire a rather weak ki blast into the clone's face and free himself from the onslaught. He dropped to a knee as soon as he touched down and turned to see what had become of his enemy. The ki blast certainly hadn't been strong enough to do any permanent damage, but it was enough to knock the clone back a ways and give the young man some breathing room.

'_Damn it!'_ Akira thought, _'If we were equal before, he's going to be mopping the floor with me now.'_ Being slammed into the ground over and over wasn't enough to injure him badly, but it had taken a lot out of his already tired body.

He knew what he was going to have to do now and he wasn't looking forward to it. Going to Super Saiyan Five when he was already weakened like this was going to be far from pleasant, but if he waited, he'd only be that much weaker when he finally did it and he was sure he had no chance of winning unless he went all out.

He braced himself for the unpleasantness to come and began to raise his power level.

ooo

Vegeta was getting frustrated. He could feel the ground shaking as Akira powered up even more and he wanted to go see what the hell was going on. Bulma's explanation of the events in the kitchen had left him with almost as many questions as he'd had before she started talking.

She said that Akira had tried to stab her, but that just didn't make sense, if there was one thing the young man wouldn't do it was attack Bulma. It didn't take a genius to see that the young man looked to her as something of a mother. He would defend her to his last breath. But if that was the case, then what was he doing with the knife?

Vegeta scowled and wrapped an arm protectively around his wife who was clinging to him, clearly shaken by her apparent brush with death at the hands of her adopted son. The Saiyan Prince could feel Trunks, Gohan and Goten making their way towards the area that Akira and the mystery man were apparently fighting and Uubu was heading there from the opposite direction.

'_Well,'_ he mused, _'at least there will be a few people there to straighten things out.'_ Still, as the strongest fighter besides Akira, he felt like it should be he that was there. He should be the one to separate the two warriors and figure out just what the hell it was that was happening.

"Bulma," he whispered, "I need to go."

"Then you're taking me with you," she replied.

"Are you insane?" Vegeta actually was pretty sure that he knew the answer to that question; Bulma had proven her lack of sanity many times over. He occasionally marveled how someone so smart could be such an idiot at time. And yet, it was her fearlessness that had originally shown him that she was more than just a weak human who happened to be handy at fixing his training equipment. Where it not for her insanity he probably never would have fallen in love with her.

"That's my _son_ out there," she replied sternly. "I'm not going to let him go through whatever it is that's happening without me being there."

Vegeta growled something unintelligible and then scooped her up into his arms and flew out the door. He had to get to the bottom of this and at least with Bulma with him he'd know that she was relatively safe.

ooo

The light surrounding Kanata faded away, revealing a decimated landscape. Where there had once been a large flat desert with many small rock formations and mountains, there was now just a large hole with a very angry looking red fur covered saiyan floating in the middle of it.

The clone, whose vision had cleared just in time to see the display, stared in wonder at the strange man. This fighter, who might just be another clone that had been created by the saiyans or at least by Bulma, was suddenly not looking like the easy prey he had been only a moment before. He had briefly sensed the man's power level as he had been powering up and it seemed to have exceeded his own, but that didn't seem possible. From what his master had said, only the saiyan called Akira would be able to achieve that kind of power, but he had been taken out of the equation. And while this fighter looked like he might be a clone of Akira, it didn't seem possible that he could be this strong. The clones themselves had needed to work hard to achieve this kind of strength and yet this fighter had already seemingly surpassed them.

How long had the saiyans known about the Arlean's plan? How were they able to clone Akira without the Alrean knowing? These were all questions that the clone and his master were dying to know but it seemed unlikely that this warrior, whose eyes burned with hatred as he stared at the clone, was going to give them any answers willingly.

Clone Akira wished that his master would let him leave, not that he cared about dying, but it almost seemed pointless to stay here not even fighting one of the real enemies. Still, his master had commanded him to stay until he was either able to get an accurate read on this new fighter's power level or kill him and so the clone would remain.

"You should have run when you had the chance," Kanata called out with an evil looking smile as his yellow eyes flashed dangerously. "By listening to you master, you've signed your own death certificate."

"I don't fear death," the clone replied evenly.

"You did by the time I was through with you last time."

The clone started to ask what the strange warrior was talking about, when suddenly Kanata was right in front of him. His fist shot forward and then faded away as the clone brought an arm up to block it, a second later the fist came in from a different direction and slammed into the side of the Clone Akira's head sending him skipping along the uneven ground.

The clone rolled to a stop and looked up, just in time to see a foot come down hard on his face and bury him half way into the ground.

"I told you, you're nothing but a sad imitation. You stand no chance against me," Kanata said as he reached down and pulled the bleeding clone out of the ground. He grabbed his younger self's double by the neck and lifted him into the air. "Now, I think it's time to have a little fun…"

ooo

Aside from the first time the transformation had been triggered back when he thought that Pan had been killed by Ammit, Akira had never tried to use his Super Saiyan Five form when he was anything other than full power. In fact, he'd almost never used it at all. The form felt the way Vegeta had originally described his early Super Saiyan Three experiences, his whole body just ached from the tremendous power that ran through him. In theory, if he used it more frequently, his body would grow accustomed to the feeling and eventually it wouldn't be a big deal to him, but he never really seen a point to going through all the pain that would involve.

He saw the point now.

His whole body felt like it was going to explode; every nerve ending was on fire as he trembled with exertion. It took an extremely large amount of power to reach the highest known form of Super Saiyan and even more to sustain it. At the moment, Akira really didn't have the kind of power it would take to use this form for long, but if he could finish the fight quick enough, it wouldn't matter.

Golden light surrounded him as his fur and hair began to glow, a metallic blue color flashed across his eyes a few times and then the yellow faded away and the blue remained there permanently. He screamed in pain as his body did its best to hold him together while he drew in an almost unbelievable amount of power. The clouds swirled around him and the ground shook, causing the nearby ocean to heave and swell.

It was all or nothing here, he'd either be dead and standing in front of King Emma before he even realized what had happened or he'd have the power to win.

ooo

Pan watched in wonder as Akira tried to ascend. She could see that it was more than his body could easily handle and it scared her. She'd heard stories of Vegeta's sacrifice against Majin Buu and knew that her grandfather had been prepared to do the same against the shadow dragons. Her father had warned her that if someone didn't know their limits and respect them, they could destroy themselves trying to power up too much. Vegeta and Goku had meant to do it, but it was possible to kill yourself unintentionally if you drew in more power than your body could handle.

Akira was very close to that right now.

She heard several nameks cry out in alarm as the planet seemed to shake under their feet; no doubt many of them were having flashbacks to the battle between her grandpa and Frieza on the first planet Namek. Pan desperately hoped that this battle wouldn't end the same way that one had.

The clone, Pan could see, was starting to get nervous. When Akira had initially begun powering up, his double had sat back and watched with a look of assurance on his face. No doubt he could see the strain that the young man was going through also and was certain that it would be too much for the saiyan's body to handle, but now that Akira's fur was flashing faster and faster between gold and red, the clone did not look nearly so cocky.

She'd felt helpless so far in this fight, it was way above her current level, but if an opportunity presented itself she was going to help Akira in whatever way she could. She just hoped he didn't kill himself before that opportunity arrived.

o

o

**A/N: **Well, here's a fairly quick update because I still feel bad about taking so long with the last one. Also, this chapter was at nearly 4,000 words and would probably take close to double that just to finish. So I figured I'd post this and then finish up the fights in the next chapter. Sorry if there were a lot of mistakes in this one, I didn't really proof read it as much as I normally try to. Also, I apologize if it seemed like I was taking the easy way out with the whole Future Akira going to level four without a tail. I just figured that if Vegeta was able to do it with basically concentrated "moon" beams when he was only a SSJ2, certainly someone with more power than that could push through the barrier and ascend without help. It might be a bit of a stretch in logic, but then this _IS_ DBZ…Anyway, thanks for the reviews (nearly to 500! Gasp!) I'll try to update sometime in the middle of the week if I can, if not then certainly by next weekend.


	47. To Change the Future Part Three

**Chapter 47: To Change the Future Part Three**

o

"Now, I think it's time to have a little fun…"

Kanata's fist reared back and then slammed into the clone who was desperately trying to pry the powerful grip off of his throat so he could breathe again. The fist hit the clone's face over and over, slowly reducing the splitting image of his younger self into a bloody heap. And then with a cruel smile, the powerful warrior tossed the clone into the air, reappeared above him and fired a ki blast directly into his chest.

Clone Akira streaked towards the ground like a red and gold comet until he came to a sudden stop a few feet above the ground as a loud crack echoed off the surrounding rocks and mountains and Kanata appeared below him with his fist in the clone's back.

The angry saiyan tossed his enemy to the ground almost haphazardly, the fight was already over and he knew it. Even though the two of them were using the same transformation, Kanata was far stronger than his enemy. Ten years of fighting and bleeding didn't come without benefits.

"Now then," he said as he approached the still form, "let's have a little chat."

The clone tried to stand to fight back, but his legs no longer worked. He looked up into Kanata's almost gleeful eyes and tried to back away with just his arms. It was a futile attempt and they both knew it.

"I won't tell you anything," the clone said without fear. "No matter what you do to me."

"No, you won't tell me anything until your master lets you," Kanata replied with a grin, "but I don't want information, I can get that on my own. I want to send a message."

The clone started to bring his hand up in front of his face to use instant transmission, but before it got half way there, a beam of red ki shot through his arm, severing it at the elbow and spraying the ground with red blood. Clone Akira grabbed what was left of his arm and howled in pain as the severed portion twitched on the ground next to him.

"Sorry, you can't leave yet," Kanata said calmly as he watched with mild interest as the clone struggled to block out the intense pain, "I know how instant transmission works, it takes a lot of focus to pull off. Anytime it looks like you're starting to recover enough, I'll just remove another body part." He paused and studied the clone who seemed to be quickly going into a state of shock, he wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. "I assume 'The Arlean,' as you called him in our last meeting, is listening now…probably trying to figure out who and what I am."

"What are you talking about?" the clone gasped as he pressed his hand against his bloody stump of an arm. "I've never met you before and I certainly never told you about the Arlean, who are you?"

Kanata ignored him as golden ki flowed around one of his hands. "I hope your master can see this. I want him to know what kind of monster he unleashed when he took everything from me." The hand flashed forward again and again as Clone Akira's screams of agony echoed off the surrounding rocks and mountains.

ooo

The burning sensation that seemed to permeate every cell in Akira's body slowly eased down as the golden aura that burned around him like a torch faded away. He took several deep breaths, trying to focus on what he needed to do. He didn't feel like he was on fire anymore, but the pain still remained. His whole body trembled slightly as he struggled to hold down the power that seemed to have filled him to the breaking point.

Akira knew immediately that he would not be able to remain in this form for very long; he was lucky he hadn't destroyed himself powering up. The best he could hope for was to last a minute or two, much more than that and his body would give out. It was exhausting just trying to hold the form together and any fighting he did would only tire him out that much quicker.

He had to end this fight right now.

His metallic blue eyes snapped open and locked onto the clone who was standing a short distance away, a look of confusion and fear on his face. Akira took that to mean that his enemy was unable to duplicate this transformation, but he didn't have time to ask him about it.

In an instant he'd crossed the distance between the two of them and sent the clone flying with a brutal blow to the face. The level four Super Saiyan soared out over the nearby lake or ocean, the speed of his flight causing the waters to part in his wake, and then he came to a dead stop as he ran into a hard, unyielding object.

The clone slumped forward slightly, but a powerful hand latched onto his neck and brought him around to look into the face of the golden haired Akira. The young man let a small, feral smile cross his lips and then with a flick of his wrist he sent the clone soaring into the air. A half second later the Super Saiyan was streaking after his dazed enemy.

ooo

Pan had completely lost track of the fight now. To her, and everyone around, it looked like Akira and the clone had simply vanished after the young man's ascension. The sudden spray of water told her which direction the fight had gone and the occasional sounds of battle told her it wasn't over yet, but outside of that she was completely in the dark.

Suddenly there was a loud clap of thunder overhead and then a streak of red and gold lightening slammed into the ground a short distance away from the village as a cloud of dust rose into the air.

She rushed forward to investigate, leaving the confused and slightly terrified nameks behind.

As she neared the crash site she found a golden Super Saiyan Five Akira standing over a bruised and bloodied Akira, who had reverted back to his normal state but was still conscious. The golden Akira was gathering ki in his hand, preparing to finish the fight once and for all.

Pan was torn, she didn't know if the clone was able to reach that level of Super Saiyan, but if he had...

"Akira?" she asked quietly.

The golden warrior turned and looked at her with his metallic eyes, "Pan, go back to the village, I'll be done in a second."

"No Pan, he's the clone," the Akira on the ground cried out desperately, "Help me."

The golden Akira looked down at his enemy and sneered, "Shut up liar, this ends now. Sie Ka—"

The ki in his hand faded and he dropped to his knees as the light surrounding him faded and he too returned to his normal state. Now both Akira's looked identical.

"Damn it," the former Super Saiyan Five said as he sucked air greedily into his lungs, "I took too much time."

Pan cringed; this was exactly what the older Akira had warned her about. She had no way of really knowing who was who.

Both Akira's looked up at her.

"Pan, it's me, Akira," they both said at the same time and then turned and glared at each other. "Shut up you liar! You're the clone!"

A moment later they were tumbling around in the dirt, fighting like vicious little children. Vicious, little children who happened to look exactly the same and one of which was a murderer who wanted to kill her and all the nameks. Pan was too shocked to do anything but stare as the two men rolled around in front of her.

ooo

Goten, Gohan and Trunks arrived at the scene of the battle only a few seconds before Uubu. The sight that greeted them was one that made their stomachs turn. An older man, who looked suspiciously like a Super Saiyan Four though his back was too them, was standing over Akira, his hands dripping blood as the young man lay helplessly on the ground. Akira no longer had any arms and his chest was riddled with holes, apparently created by the man's hand. There was no way the young man was still alive.

"Akira!" Trunks yelled as he shot forward, golden light surrounding him; the other three were only a second behind him.

The older man looked up, almost as if he were coming out of a daze and just noticing the new comer's presence. He glanced down at what was left of the body and then back at the charging warriors.

"No you fools, you don't understand!" he said as he ducked under the first attack and then swatted Uubu's kick to the side with such force that the young warrior was sent flying. The man then leaned back just as Goten and Gohan's fists sailed through the air where his head had been a moment before. "Stop, let me explain."

"Explain?" Trunks yelled as he charged forward once again, "You killed Akira!"

The man was behind Trunks in the blink of an eye and had the saiyan's arms pinned behind him before Trunks even realized what was happening. "Take another step and he dies," the man growled threateningly at Goten, Gohan, and Uubu.

The three warriors froze.

"Good. Now, if you'll just listen, I'll explain."

Tears of rage and grief were rolling down Trunks' face, "You killed him!"

"That isn't who you think it is," the man said with a strangely calm voice, "He's not Akira..." His voice trailed off as he pushed Trunks away from him and powered down, the fur receded and the tail vanished. The four warriors eyes widened in shock at the sight before them. "...I am. Or was, at least."

"H, how is this possible?" Gohan, the first to recover his voice, asked.

"I'll explain later, but for now, I need you to get everyone together and meet me, your Akira, and Pan at the Lookout," he started to bring his hand in front of his face and then paused, "Oh, and if you see anyone that looks like Akira, but isn't with Pan or myself: kill him."

And then he was gone.

The four men stood in silence, not sure what to do or say, their eyes locked on the mangled flesh that they had thought was Akira. The things the strange man had said didn't make sense, but he'd seemed sincere. After the way he'd captured Trunks, there was little doubt that he could have finished all of them off if he'd really wanted to.

"AKIRA!" Bulma's shriek of horror and grief brought them out of their haze as Vegeta and Bulma landed behind them and the aqua haired woman made a mad dash towards the bloody remains. Vegeta caught her before she'd crossed half the distance and held her close to his body as she cried. He looked at the body and then back at the four dumbfounded warriors.

"One of you better tell me what the hell happened here," he said in a threatening voice.

The men glanced at each other and then back at Vegeta and began telling him what they knew.

ooo

Pan was still watching the two Akira's tumble around as each tried unsuccessfully to gain an upper hand. She could easily break up the fight, but what if she grabbed the wrong one or somehow created an opening that the clone could use to kill the real Akira? She didn't think she could live with herself is she was responsible of Akira's death.

And so she waited, looking for any sort of sign that one of the Akiras was a clone.

"What's going on?" a voice asked from just behind her. Pan turned and found herself looking into face of the older Akira, Kanata as he called himself.

"You lost sight of him?" the older man asked incredulously.

"Well, he's not the easiest person to keep track of when he's going all out!"

Kanata glared at her briefly, but then turned his attention to the two Akiras who had continued their brawl without noticing his arrival. He watched them for a moment, but he couldn't really see any difference either. He pointed a finger at their feet and fired a ki blast, causing both of them to stop mid swing and look at him in surprise as a ball of energy formed in his hand.

"Sorry, which ever of you is the real Akira, but I'm just going to have to kill you both and wish the real one back." Kanata did not look very sorry.

"No!" Pan yelled as she moved to put herself between the two Akiras, before she got there she found that the glowing ball of ki was now pointed at her.

"Don't think that because you're Pan I won't do it," Kanata growled threateningly. "You're not my Pan, I don't owe you anything."

The ball of energy grew brighter as the older man prepared to fire it at her and then one of the Akira's leapt forward. In the blink of an eye, Kanata had shoved both Pan and the moving Akira off to the side and then fired the ki blast at the Akira who had remained still, ripping a hole in his chest and killing him instantly.

Pan and the last Akira looked at the corpse and then back at the man from the future, their eyes wide with shock.

"How did you know?" Pan asked.

"Obviously only the real Akira is going to try to protect you," Kanata replied with a roll of his eyes.

"But what if you were wrong?" Akira asked.

"Then I would have killed you too and we'd be back at my original plan."

Pan and Akira glanced at each other nervously. Neither liked the idea that this Akira from the future could so calmly talk about taking an innocent life (particularly that of a past version of himself) just to make sure that a criminal was taken down too, regardless of whether or not the innocent could just be wished back.

"Thank you my friends," Mouri said as he walked up to them, his voice bringing the younger saiyans out of their thoughts. "Once again we owe you a great debt."

"Good," Kanata said gruffly, "Then gather the dragonballs, I have some wishes that need to be made. And I may need one of your people to come with me to create a new set of dragonballs."

Mouri looked slightly taken aback by the tone of the older warrior's voice, there was definitely a small threat lying under the command. "I will have the dragonballs gathered, but I cannot force anyone to join you, that is a decision they will need to come to on their own."

Kanata scowled for a second, but then his face relaxed. It didn't really matter if one of the nameks came with him anymore; it had been too long to be able to make a meaningful wish in his timeline anyway.

o

o

**A/N: **I was really glad to see that everyone seemed to accept the Kanata transformation; I guess that means that I did a decent job setting it up. Well, now the initial fighting is done and things can start getting fixed. The next two chapters will be focused around Kanata fixing all the things he deems wrong with this timeline and then after maybe one chapter of down time he'll be making his return trip. From here on out I'm just going to update on either Friday or Saturday; it's easier for me that way and you all will know what to expect. If a week is too long to wait, I'm sorry, I have a life outside of this story and school work on top of that. Anyway, thanks for all the reviews!

Midnight46: In the chapter where Akira (Kanata) is sent off on his last mission (chap. 39); I said that he had enough fuel to go back in time, but not enough for the return trip. Looking back on it, I don't think I made a big enough deal about that since it was just one little line in a chapter that had a lot of big things happening. Hope this clears up the confusion for you.

Courtney: I can't leave a big bad guy around in a different timeline; that would be like Trunks not killing his androids or Cell, it just isn't done! The question is, can he actually do it (the Arlean has had ten years to solidify his power)?

donkeykong27: A trilogy, eh? I don't know. To be honest I haven't given it much thought, though both DBZ and GT had three sagas to them. I wasn't even finished with the Ammit Saga before this one started working itself around in my head, but this time that hasn't really happened. If I did decide to do a third one, it wouldn't be for a while because I'm a bit burned out (with the exception of about 2 weeks, I've been writing for a year straight now) and it's getting harder to come up with semi-original fight scenes. They used to be the easiest part of the story, but now I dread them. Maybe after I've taken a break I'll be more inclined to think up a third story.


	48. The Wishes

**Chapter 48: The Wishes**

o

There was an excited gleam in Kanata's eyes as the seven large, orange orbs were placed on the ground in the middle of the village and Mouri called forth the dragon.

"Takara Popora Punga Teepeedy Paro!" the namek leader shouted, the balls glowed brightly and the sky grew dark. And then an orange light shot into to the air and swirled around until the great dragon Porunga appeared.

"YOU HAVE COLLECTED ALL SEVEN DRAGONBALLS; NOW, AS IT IS WRITTEN, THINK WISELY AND I WILL GRANT YOU THREE WISHES WITHIN MY POWER," Porunga's deep voice boomed out across the plains of New Namek.

"Tell him that we want all of the people killed by the clones in my timeline to be revived," Kanata ordered Mouri. The namek elder was quiet for a moment as he figured out the correct translation to the wish and then relayed it to the dragon.

There was a brief pause as the dragon considered the wish and Kanata could feel his hopes rising.

_'Just say, "it is done," just say, "it is done," just say, "it is done," just say, "it is done."'_ he chanted in his mind. Until this moment he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. He'd been prepared for the worst, but now as the Porunga pondered, Kanata felt a surge of excitement run through his body. It would work. It had to work.

"THAT WISH IS NOT WITH IN MY POWER."

And then the hope was gone, crashing painfully down around him. He'd thought this would happen, it had been ten years after all, but still he'd had to try and then for that brief second, he'd been sure it was going to work. That was over now.

"Alright, tell him that I want everyone that I purged to be brought back or at least everyone from the last year," if he couldn't have his friends back he'd at least try to undo some of the damage he'd done.

_'Purged?'_ Pan and Akira thought at the exact same moment, as they focused in on the older saiyan. Pan glanced back at Akira with an unspoken question in her eyes, wanting to know if he had any idea what his older self was talking about, but he only shrugged.

"THAT WISH IS NOT WITHIN MY POWER."

Kanata was passed despair, now he was just really, really mad. "What do you mean it's not within your power?" he demanded as he floated into the air and looked the dragon in the eyes. "You're a fucking mystical dragon! Grant my wish!"

"I CANNOT GRANT WISHES IN ANOTHER TIMELINE," Porunga replied in an even voice.

Ki swirled around Kanata's trembling hands, slowly forming into balls in each of his palms. "If you're this weak then you're of no use to me," he growled, anger clouding his mind to the point of near insanity.

"Akir...Kanata, stop!" Pan's stern voice from just behind him cut through the haze, but he did not let the attacks forming in his hands dissipate.

Kanata snorted at the tone of her voice. "I'm not your Akira, you can't glare at me and get me to do what you want," he told her coldly, he could feel her staring holes in the back of his head and could almost picture the look she was probably giving him, "And you're not my Pan...I'll never see my Pan again...all these years of struggle and I still failed."

Pan wasn't sure what to say, she could hear the pain in his voice, but could also see the swirling balls of ki that glimmered in his hand. "There might still be a way..."

"No!" he shouted, the pain was gone and the anger was back, "I'm going back to my time and getting my revenge! This whole trip was just a waste of time."

"It wasn't a waste, you saved us!"

"I only came back for the dragonballs, I didn't care about saving you," the older saiyan said, though it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

"You're lying," her voice was firm and unwavering, completely certain that she was right.

He turned around and glared, his intense, onyx eyes locking onto her and seemingly peering into the depths of her soul. "You don't know me," he said in a cold, hard voice. "I'm not your Akira."

"You keep saying that, but you're lying," her own dark eyes did not waver or flinch under his gaze. "You like to think that you've changed, but you're still doing everything you can to save your friends...just like _MY_ Akira would."

His hands clenched into fists and the energy that had been gathering in them vanished. He tried to say something, to deny her accusation, but the words wouldn't form on his tongue. Finally he looked away, a slightly pained expression floating across his face.

"Stay here with us," she whispered, "Help us. Let us help you."

"You can't."

"You don't know that, there might be some other way for you to revive your friends. We'll find something."

He closed his eyes and sighed and then he and Pan dropped back to the ground, refusing to meet the stares of the nameks who were probably more than a little offended that he had nearly attacked their eternal dragon, but were definitely weren't going to say anything to him for fear of what he might do if he felt provoked. He turned his back to the dragon, to Akira, and to the nameks, staring out at the ocean as he wrestled with the emotions that raged back and forth within him.

"LOOK," Porunga's voice boomed out, breaking the nervous tension, "IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY WISHES THAT INVOLVE THIS TIMELINE..."

"Please wait for just a moment," Pan said with a respectful bow, "there is something we need that involves this timeline." She turned and looked at the back of the older saiyan, hoping he would have some sort of suggestion.

Kanata could feel her eyes on him once again. "You want to know where 'The Arlean' is," he said quietly.

As Pan relayed the wish to Mouri, who translated it for the dragon, a small smile crept across Kanata's face. It was too late for his timeline, things could never be made right there. The only thing he had waiting for him when he returned was revenge and then his own death, but this place was different. Here he could make things the way they were supposed to be.

Plus, if he helped his friends from this timeline, he'd get to kill the Arlean twice and also spend a little time with a Pan, not his Pan, but then he knew he had no chance of seeing his Pan ever again. The deepest pits of HFIL were waiting for him when he died, but perhaps if he helped this timeline and got a double dose of revenge; it might be worth it in the end.

And then he heard the dragon say, "IT IS DONE."

Suddenly he knew exactly where the Arlean was, he could picture the mountain and the cave perfectly as well as where they were in relation to everything else he knew. It was a bizarre sensation, but it brought a large grin to his face.

"WHAT IS YOUR SECOND WISH?" Porunga asked.

Another thought hit Kanata, _'Why stop with just fixing the problem with the Arlean? Why not correct things even more?'_

He spun and hurried to Mouri's side, "Ask him if he can do this..."

ooo

"So, what you're saying is..." Vegeta began after listening to the strange story his son had told him, "that you have no idea what the hell you're talking about."

"Uh...yeah," Trunks answered feeling sheepish. It was taking every bit of will power in his body not to crumble under the intense gaze of his father and the occasional sobs from his mother whenever she chanced another glance at the slightly mutilated corpse that looked just like her adopted son.

Vegeta frowned and glanced at Gohan, the saiyan scholar had spent most of the time that Trunks was telling his rather short and vague story examining Akira's body. From the look on his face as he took off his jacket and used it to cover the corpse, the Saiyan Prince could tell that Gohan wasn't even convinced that the body was a fake. Still, despite his natural skepticism, Vegeta had to admit that something strange was going on; Bulma had already told him about Akira apparently trying to stab her in the kitchen and an "older" Akira saving her. In a way it did back up what Trunks had just told him about a Super Saiyan who looked just like Akira telling them that this body was a fake, but lies were easily spoken and in the heat of battle it was often difficult to tell who was speaking the truth and who was lying. Whoever this new person was he could have been lying, but for what purpose?

Vegeta hated mysteries.

"Alright," he said at last, "for now we will play along with this mysterious "older" Akira. Go gather your families and head towards the Lookout. Call the others and have them meet us there."

"What about Akira?" Goten asked.

"If this is Akira..." Vegeta's voice trailed off, he wasn't sure what he would do if someone had managed to defeat the young man. Akira, thanks to his strange relationship with Goku, was the strongest of the Z-Fighters; anything that could beat him could probably beat any one of them, though maybe not all of them in a combined attack. "Trunks, your sister should be at work still. When you get her, get the Brute Ray as well..." Vegeta hated the words even as they came out of his mouth; he'd promised himself that he wouldn't use that accursed machine again. Even when Ammit attacked, Vegeta had said that he would rather die than accept the artificial power up, but it might be a necessary evil. If nothing else, Gohan and the other saiyans could use it.

"I'll go get her," Uubu offered a little too quickly for Vegeta's liking. The young man blushed slightly as he noticed the five pairs of eyes that locked on him as soon as he spoke, at least two of them did not look amused. "I mean...uh, Trunks has to get Icalla, right? So I could just get Bra and...um..."

"Fine," Vegeta said with a scowl that let the dark skinned human know it was anything but 'fine.' After one last look at the body that was lying under Gohan's now-bloody jacket, Saiyan Prince lift Bulma easily into his arms and shot into the sky, heading towards the Lookout. The rest of the group exchanged a quick glance and then went in their separate directions, heading towards home make sure that their loved ones were safe and wishing that the universe would just let them live their lives in peace.

ooo

Akira and Pan looked at Kanata in confusion as he Mouri made the second wish.

"HMMM, VERY WELL, THEY WILL BE REVIVED IN TWO EARTH DAYS' TIME. WHAT IS YOUR THIRD WISH?" Porunga asked.

Kanata turned to the two younger saiyans, "Do you know of anything? I've made the only wishes I can."

"Well...we could wish for those people that the serial killer murdered to be brought back, but..." Pan started to say; in truth she wasn't sure if that was such a good idea. After all the earth's dragonballs had been corrupted because of too many wishes, what would they do if that happened on New Namek also?

"That is a good wish," Mouri said seeing the uncertainty on her face. "You don't need to worry about the dragonballs here, Guru was knew what he was doing when he created namek's balls, there is no danger."

Akira looked at Mouri in surprise, "How can there be no danger?"

"Your former guardian, the one you call Piccolo, was an amazing warrior before he left. We will probably never see a namek of his power again, but he had not been completely trained in the art of creating dragonballs. Guru was a master," there was an obvious reverence and pride in Mouri's voice as he spoke of the father of the nameks. He gave them a reassuring smile and then translated the wish for them.

"MY WORK IS DONE," Porunga's deep voice boomed out. He slowly rose higher into the air and then vanished.

As the dragonballs soared out of sight to the far reaches of the planet, Kanata turned to Akira and Pan and let a slightly sad smile play across his face. "Well, I suppose we should be heading back. I have an enemy to kill and probably a lot of explaining to do as well."

"What did you mean by that last wish?" Akira asked curiously.

"I'll show you when everything else is taken care of," the older saiyan replied and then without saying another word he put his hand to his forehead and disappeared.

Pan and Akira glanced at each other and shrugged. "Thank you for your help Mouri," Pan said as she smiled at the namek elder.

"Uh...sorry about, you know, _him_," Akira mumbled.

"The actions of your friend are not your responsibility," Mouri replied graciously.

"Yeah, but he is...me, sort of."

"And like you he saved my people, good luck in your upcoming battle."

The two saiyans smiled at the nameks one last time and then Akira placed a hand on Pan's shoulder and they vanished as well.

o

o

A/N: Well, this represents 2,000 of the most annoying words I have ever tried to put together. I wrote this stupid thing over and over and just couldn't get it to come out the way it should have, but then my deadline arrived so I had to go with it. Fortunately the next chapter shouldn't be as bad, just a quick bit of explaining to the Z-Fighters and co. and then we're off to great all sorts of violence (finally!). I've decided that if I do manage to finish a chapter before Saturday I'll post it, but only if I have the next chapter started (I'll always post on Saturday). Basically if I feel inspired I won't hold on to it until the weekend. I hope everyone either enjoyed this or at least tolerated it; sorry if it was boring, but it had to be done. Thanks for reading, please let me know what you thought.

The idea for the dragon not being able to grant wishes in a different timeline came from Nasuren even though I argued against it at the time. It just made things easier for me (and harder for everyone in the story).


	49. Explinations

**Chapter 49: Explinations**

o

It was weird, Trunks thought as he let his senses tell him where to fly, how easy it was for him to find his soon-to-be wife. She wasn't weak by any stretch of the imagination, at least not by human standards, but when he felt her life force there wasn't anything about it that really stood out. Certainly nothing that separated it from all the others that made up a sort of buzzing background noise whenever he tried to sense another person's ki. Still, he had always been able to sense her, even before he really knew her.

_"Uh-huh...yeah...uh-huh...sure...sure...sure..." Trunks said into the phone with a roll of his eyes as he silently wished the man on the other end would just shut up and let him get back to work. It was another one of the executives trying to sell him on some boring idea that he wanted presented to Bulma, for some reason they always came to him first thinking that he could convince his mother to approve whatever it was that they wanted. He could already feel the beginnings of another headache coming on and it was only—he stopped glanced at the clock on the wall—_

_"Shit!" he yelled as he lept to his feet, the man on the other end squawked some more in his ear, "What? No, I wasn't talking to you. Look, I'm sure that this...uh, what were we talking about? Never mind, whatever it is, talk to my mom, I have to get to a meeting." He dropped the phone without bothering to hang it up and dashed out of the room. He was already late to a meeting with a consulting firm._

_'Mom's going to kill me!' he thought as he dashed through the building. He supposed he should have been mad that his secretary didn't remind him about the meeting, that's what she was there for after all, but in the long run it was probably for the best. All she ever seemed to do was stare lustfully at him before blushing bright red and then running back to her desk, on the few occasions that he'd managed to get her to take dictation or deliver his messages to him, there were either doodles of his name surrounded by hearts or else she'd missed whole passages of text because she'd accidentally started writing out a day dream about his "soft, sweet lips."_

_He really needed to fire her, but just couldn't bring himself to do it. She was a very sweet girl and would no doubt be really good at her job if she wasn't so easily distracted; plus, a part of him was rather flattered by her infatuation. Not that he had any trouble what-so-ever getting a girlfriend; actually he had more trouble with choosing between the hundreds of girls that through themselves at him, but it was nice to be loved, even if it was a rather lustful love._

_Slightly lost in thought, he actually missed the door that he was supposed to enter, but after only a few steps, his feet came to an automatic halt. He was supposed to be in that room, he walked to the door and opened it, only then realizing that this was where the meeting was taking place. Somehow that didn't seem like the reason he'd come back to it._

_"Mr. Briefs, how nice of you to join us," an older man said with a smirk as he looked up from his presentation._

_"Yeah, sorry, I was on a..." he trialed off as his eyes locked onto a young woman sitting next to the man who was making the presentation. She was giving him a look of annoyance either because he was late or because he was staring at her in a not so subtle way; regardless, it was not something he usually saw from the female population of the planet, but more than that she was gorgeous. Not super model gorgeous, he'd definitely dated women the tabloids felt were much more attractive, but this woman was...beautiful. "Uh..." Trunks suddenly realized that not only was he staring, but he was also still talking and didn't know what he was saying, "sorry." His cheeks burned as he sat down next to his mother, who was only partially trying to hide her snickering._

_"Please continue," Bulma said as she turned her eyes away from her blushing son and back to the meeting._

_Trunks had no idea what went on in that meeting, his eyes were glued to the curly haired brunette at the other end of the table. The curly haired brunette who was completely and intentionally ignoring him at the moment._

_When the presentation was over, Bulma headed for the man who had droned on and on about the company's productivity, Trunks couldn't even remember the man's name, and struck up a conversation with him. Trunks on the other hand, ignored all conversation directed at him as he made a bee line towards the woman he'd just spent the better part of an hour drooling over._

_Unfortunately for him, she was already talking to someone, so he was forced to stand there feeling stupid while he waited impatiently for her to finish and turn to him. As luck would have it, whoever she was talking to cut the conversation short when he noticed the lavender haired saiyan standing there, whether it was because Trunks was the president of Capusle Corp. or because he was glaring at the man was hard to say, but regardless Trunks now had the chance to speak with this unnamed beauty._

_"Uh...hi," he said feeling rather lame and more than a little tongue tied. "I'm..."_

_"Trunks Briefs, I know," she said as she turned and rolled her eyes. "I've seen you on the cover of just about every magazine in the super market checkout line; you're kind of hard to miss."_

_Trunks brightened, "Yeah, I guess I do stand out..."_

_There was a long moment of awkward silence as Trunks tried to think of something to say and the woman looked like she'd rather be anywhere else._

_Finally he tried to again, hoping to get the conversation rolling. "So Miss...uh, sorry, I don't think I caught your name."_

_"I didn't give it," she replied with a smile and still no name._

_Trunks was moderately desperate at this point. "Okay, um, would you give it now?"_

_Her smile faded slightly. "Look," she said in a quiet voice, "I'm flattered, but I'm really not your kind of girl, alright?"_

_"Huh?"_

_"I'm not some bimbo who's interested in a one night fling, or any fling with you. Your mom hired my company to do a job and that's what I'm here for. I'm here to work, not to get hit on by some rich boy looking to score."_

_"Hey, that's not fair," Trunks protested, "I just wanted to know your name and see if you'd like to go have coffee sometime...we could talk about the meeting."_

_She rolled her eyes and almost laughed, "Do you even know what went on in the meeting?"_

_"Well...uh...no," he was forced to admit, "but—"_

_"Trunks?"_

_Trunks turned and found a young, pretty, blond woman with a Capsule Corp ID tag and a blouse that left little to the imagination standing just behind him._

_"Uh, yeah?" he felt a bit thrown off by the sudden interruption, not that he'd been doing so hot to begin with. "What can I do for you Miss…" he read the name of the ID, "Gokai?"_

_"I was just wondering if I could have an autograph," she gushed, "All of my friends are so jealous that I'm working here and…it would really mean a lot to me."_

_Trunks smiled, wondering if the exchange was winning him points with the mystery lady or not. He was guessing 'not,' but that was no excuse to be rude. "Sure," he said as he took the rather large permanent marker Miss Gokai was holding out for him, "Where should I sign?"_

_She blushed slightly, but her eyes flashed like those of a predator as she opened her shirt a little more and motioned towards her breast._

_Trunks cringed at how this was going to look back at the mystery woman._

_"Goodbye Trunks Briefs, it was nice to meet you," she said in a dismissive tone and walked away._

_Trunks watched her for a moment, forgetting all about the blond who was holding her shirt open for him, not really sure what to think or say. On the one hand it was refreshing not to have a girl practically leaping into his lap the moment he said 'hi,' but on the other hand it was damn annoying to be dismissed before he even heard her name. _

_As he stood in the middle of the room he noticed the man who had led the meeting step away from his mother and hurry to the woman's side. There was a very short, heated conversation between the two that was decidedly one way and then she turned and sulked back towards him._

_"Meet me here," she said as she wrote the name of a coffee shop on a piece of paper and handed it to him, "Seven o'clock sharp, if you're even a minute late I won't be there."_

_He took the paper dumbly, "Um, okay." She frowned and started to walk off, but before she could take more than a few steps he called after her, "What's your name?"_

_She turned and gave him a slightly sour look before saying, "Icalla. By the way, your fan is getting impatient." _

_Trunks turned and found the blond was still holding her blouse open for all the room to see. He sighed and signed the autograph, hoping that nothing like this would happen on the date._

There were no fans exposing themselves on the date, but it still didn't exactly go smoothly, how could it when the only reason she was there was because her overbearing boss had told her in no uncertain terms that she would at least go out with him once? He never found out if his mother had requested it or not, but in the end it hadn't mattered. After the date was over, Icalla had to admit that Trunks wasn't the spoiled playboy she'd pegged him as and she'd agreed to let him take her out again...and again and again and again, until finally she'd agreed to marry him.

It wasn't until there second or third date that he'd noticed that he could feel her coming when she entered a room or met him in the park. He'd asked her about it and she thought he was trying to be funny, it was a bit early in their relationship to be explaining the whole 'alien' thing so he'd let it go as a joke. Later he asked his father about it and only received a knowing smirk before he was told to get in the gravity room so they could train.

Trunks suspected it was a saiyan thing, he'd seen Goten look up just before Valese entered a room, but his friend could no more explain it than he could. Everyone else that he knew had too high of power levels for it to be a fair study, anyone could feel Akira, Pan, or Bra coming unless they suppressed their power levels.

So the mystery continued, but it was a mystery he liked.

He saw a shiny red car just below him and knew that his fiancé was inside, probably driving towards his apartment.

Soon to be _their_ apartment, he realized with a grin as he angled down until he was flying at window level right next to her car.

He knocked on the window, "Excuse me miss, but I'm afraid you need to pull over."

Icalla turned to the window and let out a small scream as her hands jerked at the wheel instinctively. The movement would have sent her onto the sidewalk and perhaps even into one of the buildings that lined the street, but his hand had already latched onto the vehicle and held it steady.

"TRUNKS!" she yelled as she pulled over and rolled down the window. "That was _not_ funny!"

"Yeah it was," he said with a lopsided grin he knew would get him out of trouble. "Sorry I scared you."

Icalla huffed a little, but she was already over it, the grin worked almost every time. She'd been worried about him and his sudden appearance, frightening as it might have been, brought a sense of relief. "Was Akira okay?" she asked.

He tensed at the name Akira, the young man who could be lying dead in the desert if Trunks' instincts about the other fighter were wrong. "Um, I don't know, but that's what we're going to go find out." He had her get out of the car and then pressed a button on the side of it. With a poof the car had turned into a small capsule, and then Trunks turned to his fiancé and lifted her into his arms. "Hang on," he said as he shot into the air.

Around the world, similar conversations were taking place and within a few minutes, all of the Z-Fighters and their families were making their way towards the Lookout and hopefully some answers.

ooo

From the outside, the cave didn't look that impressive, just a small slit in an otherwise shear cliff face that a fairly large man could walk through with relative ease. Once you were inside, however, it opened up to reveal an enormous series of tunnels. The initial cave headed almost straight into the mountain, while the offshoots branched out and turned the mountain into an enormous ant hill.

Some of the offshoot tunnels were little more than large rooms, a few had even been fitted with doors to make them into actual rooms. It was in one of these that the dark haired young man sat, watching as five large insects blindly moved around their holding cell, each was roughly the size of a young adult human. Some of the insects were comforting one who had fallen into despair, the others fighting desperately to keep that same despair from claiming them, all of them female.

The young man scowled at them, though they could not see him. How could they feel depression when they were going to be the mothers of a new Arlean race? His master had worked long and hard finding suitable mates, ones who could breed with Arleans and who were similar enough to his own people that the new population wouldn't be so different from its father.

It didn't bother the young man at all that the females had either been kidnapped from their homes or sold on the slave market, the only thing that mattered was that the Arleans would finally be reborn and everything his master had worked so hard to achieve would finally come to pass. The saiyans would be destroyed, the humans would either join the new Arleans or be subjugated, and the Earth would have a new master race.

He'd felt the battle not long ago and knew what it meant: it was finally starting. By now Vegeta and his whore would be dead and so would the nameks and their infernal dragonballs, after that it was just a matter of picking off the remaining saiyan allies one by one until at last the universe had been cleansed of their stench.

The young man just wished that he'd been the one allowed to do it, he was the strongest of the three after all; the first to come out of the cloning chambers without mutation or flaw. He should have had the honor of killing the saiyans, but instead he was stuck here, playing babysitter. Still, the master's commands had been very specific and the master always knew what was best.

Suddenly he felt the call in the back of his mind, a slight tingle as words he had not been thinking were transmitted to him. He rose immediately and exited the room, locking it behind him just to be safe. The insectiod females in the room were all blind, a by-product of living underground on their home planet for generations, but it would be unfortunate if they somehow found the door and escaped.

He hurried down the natural halls and corridors until he reached the back of the cave where it expanded into a large cavernous room. Inside, his master was watching five cylinders filled with blue-green liquid, each holding a young saiyan clone.

"You called for me master?"

"Yes," the Arlean continued looking into the cloning tubes as he often did. "You're brothers are dead." There was little emotion in his voice; he wasn't loosing children or friends, not even people, just tools.

"What?" the clone looked up in surprise, "That's not possible."

"I assure you it is."

"How could this happen?"

"There is another saiyan, one that I did not know about," the clone turned and glanced down at the kneeling warrior, the last and strongest of the initial batch of clones. "He looks very much like an older version of Akira."

"Could he be the boy's father?"

"It is hard to say. My instincts say 'no,' but there does not seem to be any other explination. I had thought Akira's parents dead, they are never mentioned in his presense, but..." his voice trailed off as he considered the possibility of more saiyans running around the universe. "Regardless, this new saiyan seems to know of our plans somehow, we must prepare to switch tactics."

"What do you wish me to do?"

"For now, track the power levels of the saiyans' and their friends; let me know if they do anything unusual. We may have to change our plans in a hurry if they are truly on to us."

"Of course master," the clone rose and hurried towards the entrance to the cave.

The Arlean sighed and turned back to the clone tubes where five identical saiyan children were quickly growing. Now that the process had finally been perfected, it would only be a few more days before they were ready. They wouldn't be as powerful as his initial three had been, but the reason that of his first several attempts only three had survived was because of that power. The bodies of the quickly grown clones simply couldn't adjust to the enormous power they possessed. So now he was forced to limit their power, not a lot, but still a significant amount. Regardless, once he had these and the next batch there would be nothing in the universe that could harm him or his children. The race that had all but destroyed his people would be the key to the Arlean dominance of a large chunk of the galaxy. The monkeys would be their servants and their protectors.

ooo

"Hold it!" King Kai called out as Kanata appeared on the small planet, already preparing to make the next jump. The saiyan glanced up in surprise, wondering how it was that the kai had known he was even there.

"I want some answers!"

Kanata rolled his eyes, "You and everyone else…"

"Maybe, but not everyone else is a kai, so start talking!" the expression on King Kai's face told Kanata that there was no getting out of this one.

The saiyan from the future sighed and started to tell his story when suddenly there were two more people on the tiny planet.

Pan and Akira looked slightly surprised to see King Kai and Kanata, having assumed that Kanata wouldn't have stopped long enough for them to catch up so soon.

"Hi King Kai," Akira said pleasantly, "How's it going?" Bubbles and Gregory, having spotted their former playmate were doing laps around his legs in excitement.

"Well, aside from Earth, as usual, things are pretty quiet," the kai replied before turning back to the older Akira and raising an eyebrow expectantly.

"Alright, look, I don't want to tell this story over and over, so why don't you just listen in when I tell it to everyone on Earth? Heck, I'll even make sure you can feel my power level while I'm doing it," as the words came out of his mouth an enormous swell of power could be felt swirling around him.

King Kai's mouth hung open, not only was this a trick that very few people could pull off, Akira being one of the few, but from the feel of things this warrior was as strong as or even stronger than the real Akira. "Uh…okay, I gue—"

"Great, bye." Kanata was gone before King Kai could even finish.

The kai turned to Akira and Pan who shrugged and also vanished.

"Well?" King Kai called out.

"It's hard to say, but I think he's Akira," a deep voice replied as a tall namek stepped out from inside the kai's house.

"That's what I sensed too, but for some reason he didn't seem happy to see me."

"You'll get your answers soon enough, try being a little patient," Piccolo almost smiled as the Kami side of him berated him for his lack of respect to a kai.

King Kai scowled and focused in on Earth and the meeting happening that would be starting there shortly.

ooo

When the Z-Fighters arrived at the Lookout, they found Akira, Pan, and Kanata waiting for them as well as a large meal that Dende, thanks to some sort of kami/guardian foresight, had prepared. Bulma had wasted no time in running to Akira and checking him over to make sure that he was alive and well, while Vegeta, Gohan, and the rest of the fighters looked expectantly at Kanata for answers.

And so he gave them to them. Ignoring the shocked looks he occasionally got from Pan and the glare that he was continuously getting from Akira, he started at the beginning and told them of the dreams. He explained how he had almost killed Vegeta during their training because of the voice in his head, how Pan had found him in the forest nearly out of his mind and how much he had wanted to kill her. He recounted what he knew of Vegeta and Bulma's deaths, the genocide of the nameks, the accusations that came at him, the deaths of Mr. Popo and Dende. He told them how sure he was that he was behind it all and how he'd gone to King Kai's planet for help and let Vegeta nearly kill him (Vegeta made a noise that sounded almost like laughter at this), how he'd been spared in what he considered to be stupidity of cosmic proportions (in Other World, King Kai and Piccolo scowled at his description of the conversation) and afterwards told Pan that she should kill him if she ever saw him again as he sent himself into as much of an exile as he could.

As he reached the part of the story he dreaded telling most, Kanata paused and made sure to force his emotions back. He would not cry, he promised himself. He would not be weak.

And he didn't cry, but he certainly felt weak.

In a cold, nearly emotionless voice, he told them about the rest of the deaths. Pan: dead. Everyone besides Trunks and Goten: dead. Trunks and Goten after a long, stupid fight: dead. He told them of his first meeting with the clone, how he'd escaped, and how he'd been healed thanks to Mr. Satan. And then he recounted his final battle with the clone, leaving out most of the less pleasant details, but thoroughly enjoyed them himself inside his head. After that he gave them a very short version of how he'd acquired the time machine and found fuel for it, leaving out the part where he spent ten years wiping out civilizations so a pathetic changeling could feel like the big lizard on the block.

When he was finished he looked around at all of them, trying to gauge their responses. Most of them seemed to be too stunned at the news that they would all have been dead were it not for him to do much else besides stare at him in silence.

Finally Bulma cleared her throat and asked, "So, the time machine's fuel doesn't work?"

Kanata smiled; leave it to Bulma to focus on the least important part of the story. "No, it's too weak. I still have some left from my trip back though if you want to look at it. I actually need you to figure out how to make more so I can get back. My, uh..._supplier_ had a bit of an accident before I was able to get all that I needed for the return trip."

He noticed that everyone seemed to have accepted his story and that Bulma's question had brought them out of their stupor. Gohan and Goten were shaking their heads at the aqua haired scientist, while the older humans rolled their eyes and muttered jokes that, if over heard, would probably get them a serious chewing out. Pan was smiling at him with her understanding smile, though there was a slightly confused expression on her face.

Vegeta was standing away from the crowd also giving him a strange look, but the Saiyan Prince didn't seem confused, he looked like he was trying to decide something. Kanata couldn't even begin to guess what was going through the older saiyans head; he was out of practice in reading Vegeta.

The only person who was looking at him in the way that he'd partial feared he'd be looked at was, oddly enough, his younger self. Akira's eyes never strayed from him and never once softened even slightly. His face was nearly expressionless, but Kanata could practically read his thoughts.

Akira did not like this older version of himself.

_'No,'_ Kanata thought as he stared back, _'it's not that he doesn't like me, he hates me.'_ Not that he really cared much for his younger counterpart either. He'd forgotten how weak and foolish he was back then, arrogantly thinking that everything would always turn out all right because he was a 'good guy,' and unwilling to trust his own friends with his problems because he feared rejection. The young saiyan didn't deserve the life that he'd been given; no matter what Goku said, this younger Akira was a fool and would probably remain one until someone beat his stupid notions of good and evil, right and wrong, black and white out of him. The universe didn't operate like that; fate wasn't as kind as the young Akira thought.

As Kanata thought about it, it occurred to him that it was actually kind of funny that the only one who didn't seem to trust or at least accept him was sort of himself. Unfortunately, Akira was one of the people he really needed to help him if his new plan of fixing this timeline was going to work.

If there were more clones, he might need the backup. He was only guessing there would be more, just like he had only been guessing that there was a second one. That, of course, had been more of an educated guess that he'd put together over the years based on the accusations of the last surviving namek he'd found the day Vegeta died and the fact that King Yemma had told him the clone he killed hadn't killed any nameks. He wasn't sure how Yemma got his information, but he doubted there was a mistake.

And if there was two clones, why not three or four or ten? There was no way of getting around it, he would need help if there was more than one more clone, especially since he wasn't sure he could reach Super Saiyan Five without his tail.

The two Akiras continued to stare at each other for a long time, each refusing to look away and lose the impromptu battle of wills that had broken out between them. They might have stood their like that for hours had Pan not stepped between them and told them the food was going to get cold.

Grudgingly they both broke their contest at the same time, declaring it a draw. For the moment, good food was a higher priority than their mutual dislike, though they both knew that eventually they'd have to settle things one way or another.

o

o

A/N: Okay, this chapter is coming out a bit early because I'm not going to be home to post it on Saturday, but I suppose it's Saturday somewhere, right? I hope I cleared up a bit of confusion on the question of how Kanata knew about the second clone. If you can remember that far back, when he took King Kai to meet with Yemma he was told that Clone 03 had not killed any nameks (though they were obviously killed by someone that looked like Akira). The whole Trunks-Icalla flashback (Icalla is the property of Toni the Mink, by the way) was really random, I was going about writing this chapter and suddenly there it was. It wasn't apart of the chapter outline, it just sort of appeared as if by magic and who am I to ignore something like that? And speaking of magical randomness, I wrote the end of the story! Out of the blue (actually it was in the shower) it just occured to me, so I sat down (making myself late to class, but who cares about that when inspiration strikes?) and wrote it out. It wasn't really what I was expecting, but I think I like it.

Francis Keenan and Courtney: Bring back the clones? No, no, no, I have more clones in this story that I know what to do with already! You have no idea how annoying it is to write "the clone did this, the clone did that." Porunga says he will revive _them_ in _two days_. The "them" is more than two people, but it won't really come up for a couple of chapters. Believe me; Kanata is going to kill plenty of...er, himself.

Nasuren: Hmmm, a dragon hierarchy, huh? That's an interesting idea. I'm not sure how I could work it in, but it actually fits in a little bit with something that I was already planning. I don't know if I'll bother creating 'higher up' dragons, but I might make some sort of reference to them in an up coming chapter if I can get it to come out right.

Toni the Mink: Of course it can't be that easy. I've spent 45+ chapters screwing up Akira/Kanata's life; I can't let it be fixed with just the snap of a finger! I'm glad that you liked my GT band-aid. The whole idea behind the Shadow Dragons seemed a bit silly to me, but this way at least people can be using some dragonballs without fear of all hell breaking loose every time. By the way, thanks again for your advice on the Trunks-Icalla scene, hopefully she came off a little softer (or at least more justified) this time.

DBGT Goku: Thanks for understanding the whole RL part of...my life. I think I'm finding a bit of a balance now, so maybe chapters will come out a bit faster.

**Orgoth: We'll get back to good ol' violence either in the next chapter or the one after it. After it starts, there should be plenty of violence to go around as we are finally coming in to the home stretch on this story.**


	50. Telling Stories

**Chapter 50: Telling Stories**

o

"Hey Akira, what do you thi...uh, Akira?" Bulma watched her adopted son for a moment and then repeated a little louder, "Akira?"

Akira didn't blink or give any sign that he'd even heard her, he just continued staring with unblinking eyes at his plate, not eating or even really moving.

"Hey Akira, would you pass the spaghetti?" Goten asked from the other side of the young man. A few seconds passed and still Akira had not moved, "Um, Akira, did you hear?"

A soft giggle rang in Akira's ears and he looked up from his untouched plate at Kanata and Pan who were sitting on the other end of the table talking quietly and laughing occasionally. When they had first entered the dinning hall, Kanata had been quick to take the seat next to Pan's, forcing Akira to take the remaining seat between Bulma and Goten. The young man watched them for a moment and then returned to staring at his plate and ignoring everyone around him.

Akira hated that man, hated him more and more with each passing second, hated him more than he'd really thought possible and he honestly wasn't even sure why. Part of it, he supposed, was the humiliation of being beaten around like an amateur when they first met. That brief fight had stung his pride more than he liked to admit, but certainly that couldn't be enough to actually hate someone over, could it?

He glanced back at Kanata and saw Pan smile at something the older man had said. Akira felt a hint of jealous rage swell up in his chest.

That was definitely part of it. The memory of waking up, face down in a muddy puddle, and looking up to find Pan kissing the man who had done it to him. Well, maybe she wasn't kissing him...more like she was being kissed, but she certainly hadn't been struggling. Again, this didn't seem like something he should hate the future version of himself over. After all, Kanata was Akira, sort of, so it would make sense that he was in love with Pan. A lot of guys had had crushes on Pan over the years and it had never really bothered Akira, but then Pan had never looked at those guys the way she was looking at Kanata right now. Still, that didn't seem like enough of a reason to hate someone, at least not the way Akira hated Kanata.

Akira gave up all pretense of eating or looking elsewhere and stared right at Kanata, trying to figure out just what it was that the older saiyan had done to earn such an intense hatred.

The feeling had started from the moment they realized who they both were and it wasn't just the fact that they had just finished fighting that brought it up. Kanata's stolen kiss hadn't helped, but it was more of icing on the cake than anything.

He let his mind wander back to that humiliating fight. He had been totally outclassed, unable to even really defend himself against the powerful attack of his future self. Akira blinked, the attack hadn't just been powerful, it was ruthless.

_'I could never fight like that,'_ he thought to himself, but then it hit him. He _had_ fought like that, a few times actually. When he fought Ammit, when he stood over his enemy and turned the ancient alien's face into mush, he had fought exactly the way Kanata fought against him. Not to win or even necessarily to kill, attacking simply to make sure that his enemy felt as much pain as possible during the last few seconds of his life.

Akira felt the muscles in his jaw flex. That was one of the low points of his short life. He had given in completely to every dark impulse in his body, letting the hatred and rage he felt guide him, bringing him to turn for a brief moment on Pan. For those few seconds, he'd been a monster. He would have done anything in his power to keep hurting Ammit, would have destroyed anything that tried to get in his way. He would have acted exactly the way Kanata did on New Namek, willing to kill an innocent if it meant beating his enemy.

Though the encounter that led him to the conclusion was brief and far from conclusive, Akira was sure that his future self somehow represented everything he hated about himself.

At that moment, Kanata noticed that he was being watched and glanced at Akira, his eyes narrowing as he did. Akira didn't turn away, he just continued staring at his future self as the two resumed their mini battle of wills until Pan began talking to the older saiyan and he was forced to turn back to her.

_'His eyes are so cold,'_ Akira thought, a chill running through him as he continued to examine the older saiyan. He was sure there was more to Kanata than he was letting on, the saiyan from the future was lying about something. What Akira wasn't sure of was why no one else seemed to notice, they just accepted his story almost without question. Even Pan, who always seemed to know instantly whenever he tried to keep something from her, seemed to be oblivious to the deceit rolling off his tongue.

Akira wished he knew what it was that his future self was lying about; he wouldn't earn himself any points in anyone's eyes if he went running around making accusations without proof. For the moment he would just have to be patient and watch Kanata's every movement.

At that moment, Pan put her hand on the older man's forearm and smiled happily at him.

It took every once of Akira's will power to keep himself from walking over to Kanata and beating the tar out of him...or at least trying to.

ooo

Pan smiled as Kanata began to tell her another funny little story about his time spent in space looking for a way to come back and save his friends. When she noticed that he'd grabbed the seat next to her, she'd taken the opportunity to ask him about the ten years he'd spent looking for the time machine fuel. Most of his stories had been rather silly, as though he was out having a good time while looking for what he needed, but she suspected that he wasn't being entirely truthful about the trip. Not that she doubted his stories, any of them, it just seemed like there was more that he was unwilling to share.

As she looked at Kanata, her eyes momentarily focused on Akira sitting at the other end of the table, scowling. She felt a momentary flash of guilt, but quickly pushed it down; it wasn't like she was doing anything wrong. First of all, she could sit with and talk to whoever she wanted; she wasn't some possession for Akira to hold tightly to. On top of that, all she was doing was talking to him, in a manner of speaking. How could he be jealous of his future self?

_'Besides,_' she thought, _'it's not like there's anything for him to be jealous of.'_ But as soon as those words slipped through her mind, she knew they weren't entirely true. There was something about this future Akira that made her feel...she wasn't even sure what the right word was. Kanata was Akira so it was natural for her to love him, but more than that he was deeply hurt by what had happened in his timeline and she couldn't stand the thought of Akira (either of them) being hurt. And yes, he was attractive…very attractive. It was good to know that Akira would only get better looking as he aged, and it was pretty nice to get to see the results right now.

Pan shook her head, those were bad thoughts to be having and the guilt that came with them wasn't much fun. She turned her attention from Akira to Kanata who was starting another story for her.

His next story was about a beautiful princess on Harod IV who had been betrothed to several suitors who had all come to collect on the same day. She did not like any of them, but was being forced to choose a mate by her father. Whether as a joke or a moment of lust, she had told all of them that she chose Kanata, who was walking by on his way to a store where he'd been told he could purchase supplies. The princess's suitors had, of course, not taken too kindly to the news that another had stolen their prize and they promptly attacked him. He'd taken them out with ease and then informed the princess that his heart belonged to another.

Kanata gave Pan a meaningful glance at this, letting her know who it was that had his heart and causing her to blush slightly.

ooo

Kanata grinned when he saw the blush, though he reminded himself that this was not _his_ Pan no matter how she looked or acted, a part of him almost believed it too. His story about the princess was more or less true; some parts had just been altered slightly. For instance, he didn't just beat off the suitors that attacked him; he slaughtered them and left their bleeding corpses in the street. And while he did decline the princess's hand in marriage for the reason that he told Pan, he also returned three years later with a purging crew and wiped the entire Harodian civilization off the planet, though he did let the princess escape when his commander wasn't looking.

He took a few bites of food and then began telling Pan another half-true story, doing his best to ignore the flutter in his heart every time she smiled or touched his arm.

ooo

"Master," the clone said as he kneeled before the Alrean, "The warriors of Earth have gathered together. I believe they maybe with the Earth's guardian."

"Hmm," the Arlean mused, "Why would they have gone there? There is no way for them to know our whole plan; in fact, they shouldn't know any of it. However, their appearance on Namek would suggest otherwise." The insectoid closed his eyes as a debate raged inside his head, was it possible that through some sort of divine intervention the monkeys had discovered what he was planning? Could they know of his base?

'_No,'_ he decided as he shook his head, _'that's impossible. Whoever this new saiyan is, he just showed up at Vegeta's home at the wrong time. It had to be a fluke._' He stopped at that thought, perhaps Akira's father had shown up to take him back to wherever it was that he had been and was visiting Vegeta and his whore for that reason. That would explain some things, but still did not answer the question of how the clone on Namek was discovered. He would have to have Clone 01 ask the monkeys when he was standing over their broken bodies.

"What do you wish me to do master?" the clone asked.

"We will wait for the moment," the Arlean informed the still kneeling Akira Clone. "Continue to track them; we will wait until they relax their guard again before we strike. Attacking now will not sow the confusion that we need in order to succeed and in only a few days you will have five more brothers to join you."

The clone bowed and said, "As you command, master." Then he rose and headed out of the room leaving the Arlean still pondering this unforeseen turn of events and feeling like he had missed something important.

ooo

Eventually most of the humans had finished eating and even the saiyans looked like they were winding down. Soon everyone, except for the youngest full-blooded saiyan, had their eyes on Kanata as he told Pan about the plant people from Ilic. Akira was staring at a corner of the ceiling muttering to himself.

When the story concluded, Gohan decided that it would be best if they all got down to business. "So," he said after clearing his throat, "what are we going to do about the Arlean?"

"Obviously we have to fight him," Yamcha replied.

"Does it have to come to that?" Goten asked, "I mean, Vegeta did blow up his planet. Maybe if we can just explain to him that the saiyans aren't like that anymo—"

"I'm going to kill him," Kanata interrupted; there was a harsh edge in his voice that was not lost on any in the room.

"I guess that's your solution to everything, huh?" Akira said from his side of the table with a scowl. "If it gets in your way, kill it."

"You know of a better way?"

"We could try Goten's idea, we could see if we can get him to understand that we don't want to hurt him. It doesn't have to end in blood shed."

"You have no idea what blood shed looks like. The Arlean's already had everyone in this room killed once; maybe you'd like a repeat performance?" Kanata shot back.

Akira's eyes slipped from Kanata's face to Pan's, the look on the young woman's face was difficult to read, but she clearly wasn't happy with him. Akira scowled and looked away, not sure if he was mad at Kanata for existing or at Pan for apparently siding with the older man or with himself for suggesting something that could get her hurt just because he hated his future self.

Kanata stared at the younger man for a moment, making sure that he was sufficiently cowed for the time being and then began to explain his plan. "For starters, I don't think it's a good idea to attack tonight, I don't know how many more clones he has and Akira won't be at full strength until he's had at least one decent night's sleep. Tomorrow we'll go down there and finish this once and for all."

Akira wanted to tell his future self that he and his plan could go to hell, but he knew that was his hatred talking. If it meant keeping Pan safe he would be there in a heartbeat, plus it would give him a chance to keep his eye on Kanata.

"What if he moves during the night?" Bulma asked.

"Cloning tubes are pretty big and very delicate; it would take a while to get them apart and moved to a secure location and he can't even do that if there's something growing in them. I'm sure he'll remain there at least for tonight."

o

o

A/N: Ilic is a planet briefly mentioned in the Star Wars book _Dark Force Rising_, by Timothy Zahn which I recently read for about the hundredth time and Harod IV is a planet from Star Trek (kind of random, but oh well).

A/N: Okay, first of all I am so sorry that this came out as late as it did. I know it's technically still Saturday (at least in the US it is), but I generally wanted to be updating in the morning as apposed to 9:30 at night. I didn't get much of a chance to proof read or smooth things out the way I usually try to, so I apologize if it wasn't one of my better chapters, but for some reason all of my professors thought this week would be a good weak to assign big projects or have tests (1 essay, 1 "small" research paper, and 2 tests! Yuck!). Anyway, this chapter and the next one were supposed to be all one chapter, but as I wrote it they didn't seem like they fit together very well so I had to split them up. Unfortunately that means that the fighting gets pushed back one more chapter, but it is coming! I promise! I just turned in an essay and have the next week relatively free from school projects, so I might be able to get two chapters done this next week (one on Wednesday or Thursday and the other on the usual Saturday). Anyway, thanks for all the reviews as always. This story has way more reviews than I ever thought I'd get!

Toni the Mink: I rather liked that chapter too; sometimes random fluff and silliness can be nice. The whole Akira-Kanata rivalry has been something that I've been looking forward to adding to the story since almost the very beginning. I think it would suck to see that you turn out to be a bastard in the future or to see how you were in the past before you had all the knowledge accumulated over your lifetime. As for how many more chapters...hmm, usually when I think I know how many I have left I end up being wrong, but I can safely say that it's probably less than ten. I'd guess there are something in the neighborhood of six left, but who knows? Maybe I'll be done after the next chapter (er, maybe not)!

Courtney: Sadly no Goku outside of the way he appears here...or at least he can't come back to help fight. I'm trying to pretend to keep the whole continuity thing sort of going, so I have to keep him away. I think if I write another DBZ story I need to pick one with him in it, I kind of miss the guy.

The Tiny: Mostly it was just the end of the final fight, not so much the end of the story (I have to write the epilogue still). But just knowing how things work out in the end gives me some direction in certain areas that I desperately needed direction in. I think everyone will like it though, or at the very least not completely hate it.

Orgoth: I'll do my best with the violence. The ending of the clone vs. Akira fight was the goriest scene I've ever written and I don't know if I can do more, but there will definitely be a bit of blood and gore. I just sort of write the fight scenes as they appear in my head, so I don't really know what will happen until I start writing it.

Francis Keenan: I do have a bit of a plan for the insect women involving Kanata. I think it'll be in the next chapter. As for a sequel, I don't even want to think about it...my brain is so fried right now from writing these two stories that I've been struggling just to get through this one. "This is Kyle's brain. This is Kyle's brain on Dragonball New Beginnings." sizzle Yeah, that sounds about right. Still, if I don't do the next story, someone else is welcome to. Like I've said at the beginning of both my stories, if someone wants to use any of my characters they are more than welcome to (though I'd like to hear about it so I can read whatever story they write).

Draco the Destroyer: The battles are coming; we just have to get passed all this boring plot stuff first! Thanks for the review, better late than never, right?

Midnight46: Icalla actually is property of Toni the Mink (from the story _Crushed_, if memory serves). I felt like Trunks needed some sort of significant other and Toni suggested Icalla so I went with that. I had planned on explaining her a little more early on, but she kind of got pushed to the side as the story twisted and evolved in my mind.

Nasuren: A higher dragon probably could grant the wish, but for the purposes of this story, Porunga will be as high as we see. Personally, I don't want to have to come up with an explanation for the higher dragon and really, really, really don't want to add something to the story that would add any more length than I already have…my brain is mush from all this writing during the last year or so.

Rejhan: I'm glad you liked the chapter, the part with Icalla was a bit light hearted and man did I need a scene like that, sometimes when I write a lot of Kanata stuff (usually him being either pissed or depressed or somewhere in between) I find my self slipping into a bad mood as well. No more angsty stories for me for a while.


	51. Perceived Betrayal

**Chapter 51: Perceived Betrayal**

o

"Go to bed Akira, we have a busy day tomorrow," Kanata called out after watching the younger man's head begin to droop for the fourth time in last couple of minutes.

Evening had arrived at the Lookout and the Z Fighters' families were shown their rooms for the night; though most of the Earth's warriors choose to stay up for a while and discuss the developments of the day.

"Thanks _mom_, but I don't need you telling me what to do," the young man growled as he fought to keep his eyes open. For over two weeks he'd been having nightmares every time he closed his eyes and despite the fact that Kanata had told him he had been freed from them, a part of Akira still feared what images would come should he let himself rest. On top of that, he had no desire to leave Kanata alone with Pan.

"Go to bed, boy!" Vegeta yelled from the other side of the room.

Akira's eye twitched slightly as he muttered something under his breath and remained where he was, folding his arms in a very Vegeta-like manner, letting everyone know he wouldn't be budged.

Kanata glanced around, making sure that everyone was mostly out of ear shot and then whispered harshly, "Look you little asshole, just do what you're told and stop acting like a little child. I'm not going to let you fuck up everything I've worked so hard for just because you're so stuck on yourself you can't even see how weak you are!"

"Screw you!" Akira hissed back in a slightly louder voice that was laced with as much venom as he could muster. "I'll go to bed when you tell me the truth about whatever it is your hiding! Until then, _asshole_, I'll do whatever I damn well please."

"I'm not hiding anything, idiot. I'm trying to keep you from making the biggest mistake of our life!"

"You're a liar," Akira replied, "I don't know how I know or why Pan doesn't see it, but you're lying every time you open your mouth."

Kanata was silent for a moment and then actually started chuckling, "So, that's what this is all about! Don't worry little boy, I'm not here to steal your girlfriend. She's not _my_ Pan after all."

"This has nothing to do with that," Akira whispered back, "there's something you're not telling us!" He glanced at the other side of the room where Pan was talking to her father, "Oh, and don't give me that, 'She's not my Pan' crap. I've seen the way you look at her, if you dare put one hand on her I'll kill you where you stand, I don't care who you are."

"I'd like to see you try," Kanata shot back, not even sure why he was provoking his younger counterpart. "I've improved a lot in ten years. You wouldn't do any better against me now than you did earlier today, if you lasted five minutes it would be a miracle."

Akira bared his teeth at the smirking Kanata and then without thinking, his fist shot forward and sent the saiyan from the future flying across the room and into a wall.

"Are you still so sure about that?" Akira yelled at Kanata as the older man climbed to his feet.

Kanata touched his tongue to the cut on his lip as coppery-tasting blood trickled into his mouth, his eyes darted back and forth across the room, noting the shocked looks from most of the remaining Z-Fighters and also the fact that most of them probably wouldn't interfere when the fight broke out. He spit the blood out of his mouth and let out another chuckle. "If that's the best you've got you should just go to bed, weakling. I barely even felt that!" he taunted.

Akira was enraged. Hs hands clenched into tight fists and his muscles tensed as they prepared to launch him at his future self. Suddenly, just as he was about to make his move, a small, but powerful hand grabbed his wrist and jerked him around so he was staring into the dark eyes of a very pissed off Pan.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

"I..." Akira's voice trailed off and his eyes fell to the floor as he tried to think of what to say.

Pan waited for a moment and then began tapping her foot, "Well?"

"Just a misunderstanding, I guess," Akira mumbled lamely, refusing to look back into her eyes.

Pan stared at him for a few more seconds, waiting for him to tell her the truth, and then gave up. "Come on," she said quietly, "Let's get you in bed; you're going to need all the rest you can get."

Akira scowled down at the floor, but didn't this time didn't protest as Pan half led, half dragged him out of the room. Kanata watched him go and then walked outside to try to clear his head.

ooo

"So," Pan asked as she watched Akira pull off the rags that had once been a nice shirt, "are you going to tell me what's really going on?"

"I said it was nothing," Akira whispered, rubbing his tired eyes as he continued to fight off sleep.

'_Why is he acting like this?'_ Pan asked herself. _'Doesn't he know this is what the other Akira said was his problem in the other timeline? That because he hid things from me everything got screwed up?'_

Akira walked to the window of the room and stared up at the stars, wondering when exactly it was that his life had begun to turn into this confusing mess and how it had happened in such a short amount of time. He was certain that he hadn't done anything to deserve this, but apparently it was his fate…or Goku's fate, depending on how you looked at it.

He quickly shook his head; he didn't even want to start thinking about _that_ whole issue again. After all these years, he'd learned that it was better just to ignore it than dwell on it, the Supreme Kai hadn't known what to make of his situation with Goku, so apparently it was an unsolvable mystery that would always remain such. Better just to enjoy life than worry about your girlfriend's maybe-dead grandfather whose soul you happen to have been created with. He could feel his insides starting to tighten, a sure sign that he'd been thinking about Goku more than enough already, so he turned his attention back to Pan who was watching him carefully.

"See something you like?" he asked in a slightly pathetic attempt at lightening the mood, a small, tired smile dancing across his face.

"No," she whispered and his face fell until she added, "something I love."

Akira blushed lightly as his lips finally formed a real smile, the first real smile Pan had seen from him in a long time.

"Please…please tell me what's wrong," she asked quietly, "Let me know what's going on with you. We used to talk every day and all of a sudden you just…left and the next time I saw you was when you were fighting Kanata. We haven't even spoken since…since that night." She stepped close to him and took his hand in hers, "I know you were having nightmares; that you were dreaming of killing me and I don't care, it wasn't your fault. I just want to know what's going on inside your head; I want things to go back to being the way they used to be."

Akira sighed and rubbed his temples. He was quiet for a long time and then he quietly said, "I don't trust him."

"Who?"

"Him...me...whoever he is."

"Kanata? But...he saved us, how can you not trust him? He's you."

Akira shook his head, she'd said exactly what he'd expected and desperately not wanted to hear: _He's you._ "He's not me," the young saiyan insisted angrily, "I'll never be like him."

Pan was taken aback by the hatred in his voice. "He's been through a lot," she replied after a moment, "He felt responsible for all of our deaths, he still blames himself. You would have changed too."

Akira bit his lip, how could he explain it to her? "He's hiding something," he said at last. "There's something that happened that he hasn't told us, something important...I think."

"Whatever it is, I'm sure he wouldn't hide anything that we needed to know."

"You're sure you know him that well?" Akira shot back.

"Of course I know him, he's yo—"

"HE'S NOT ME!" Akira yelled, rage filling his eyes.

Pan backed away from him slowly as she tried to think of something to say that would calm him down. Obviously the subject of Kanata was not one that he was ready to discuss. The uncomfortable silence that settled over the room seemed to stretch on for an eternity until finally Pan cleared her throat and asked, "Why don't you want to go to sleep?"

"I'm not tired," he lied. Badly.

She gave him a look that told him she wasn't buying it.

"I just don't want to, alright?"

"Were the dreams that bad?" she moved towards him once again until finally her hand rested on his shoulder.

Akira bowed his head and refused to answer.

"Do you want to tell me about them? It might help..."

"I don't need help," he replied bluntly, "I'm fine."

"You can tell me, you know. I love you, I want to help you." It was true, but it was also an invitation for him to tell her that he loved her also. She hadn't heard it from him since...sometime during the baseball game, maybe. Had he even said it then? She couldn't remember ever going two weeks without hearing those three little words since the first time he'd told her. She desperately wanted to hear them now.

Akira either didn't care or didn't pick up on the slightly subtle invitation. "I don't need help," he repeated, "and I don't want to talk about those dreams. Why don't you go see if _poor _Kanata needs anything? You two seemed plenty chummy at dinner, I'm sure he'd _love_ to tell you some more stories…Hell, he's _me_, isn't he? I bet he could tell you all about the dreams if you really want to hear it."

It wasn't the nicest thing he could have said, in fact, it was down right cruel and he knew it, but he was angry and he didn't want to relive the nightmares. He just wanted to be left alone so he could try to make sense of all the confusion that was quickly filling his world.

Pan scowled and started to stalk out of the room, but stopped at the door. "I guess you two do have a lot in common. There are a lot of important things that you haven't been telling me lately either!"

And then she was gone and Akira was left standing alone in his room, cursing himself and, more frequently, cursing Kanata. When he ran out of expletives to apply to his situation, he marched out the door, determined to at least try to apologize before his body forcefully shut down.

ooo

"Bastard," Pan whispered angrily under her breath as she stomped away from Akira's room, refusing to let her tears escape her eyes. Why did he have to keep being like this? Why was he still so afraid? He knew it wasn't his fault, knew that she didn't blame him, but instead of opening up to her, he'd just gone off on Kanata.

Kanata, who had suffered so much. Kanata who had spent over a decade trying to save his friends. Akira should be thankful that his future self had done so much for them, but instead he despised the man; in a way, despised himself. He was acting like a spoiled little brat!

She let out a frustrated growl and kicked the wall, instantly regretting it when she saw the a large hole her foot had created. The young woman looked around sheepishly, thanking kami that...well, that kami hadn't seen her.

As she looked around, she noticed Kanata sitting on the steps next to one of the white pillars and gazing up at the stars. Pan debated whether or not she should join him for a moment and then quietly rose into the air and floated down to the entrance to the Lookout.

Kanata turned to her and smiled the moment she touched down next to him. "Hey, is the little one asleep yet?"

Pan shot him an icy glare that let him know that she suspected the fight was as much his fault as Akira's.

Kanata just chuckled and went back to watching the stars.

Pan was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Why do you two not like each other?"

Kanata frowned, actually giving it serious thought and then said, "He's weak and foolish. He doesn't know how lucky he is to have this life...to have you."

"Well, that means that once upon a time you were just as weak, foolish, and unappreciative as he is," Pan pointed out.

"Maybe," Kanata admitted, "but that doesn't mean I have to like seeing how undeserving of you I was."

"You're not as undeserving as you think," Pan told him with a smile, "and neither is he. You're both good guys, you just see things differently now."

The older saiyan looked at the ground, a sad expression settling over him, "I wasn't good enough...and neither is he. I couldn't protect you...her."

"She and I are pretty understanding. After all, we each somehow managed to put up with an Akira for over three years. I'm sure she knows that it wasn't your fault. As soon as you two see each other again, she'll tell you that."

"I won't ever see her again," Kanata whispered, his eyes suddenly becoming slightly glassy.

"Oh come on, you can't go giving up already!" Pan exclaimed as she put a comforting arm around him. "Even if the dragonballs don't work, there's got to be another way to get her back...right? Even if there isn't, she'll be waiting for you in the after life. You two will spend eternity together!"

A look that Pan could only think of as guilt, or maybe regret, crossed Kanata's face.

"What is it?" she asked curiously.

He stood and walked a few paces away from her, "It's nothing. I just...she wouldn't want to see me, not anymore."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't matter."

Pan leapt to her feet and grabbed him by the arm, spinning him around so he was facing her. "It matters to me," she whispered.

Kanata stared down at her for a long time, his dark eyes drinking in every detail of her face. He didn't say a word, but there was such sadness and pain in his eyes that she couldn't look away or even speak. They simply stood there in the star-lit grounds of the Lookout, gazing deep into each other's eyes and then slowly their faces began to drift closer towards each other.

ooo

Akira opened the outer door to the palace and stopped cold in his tracks at the sight of Kanata and Pan.

_"No...'_ his mind whispered as his blood suddenly ran cold, _'no she wouldn't do that.'_

But there she was, her face slowly inching its way towards that of his older self. Akira wanted to yell, he wanted to kill Kanata, he wanted to destroy something, he wanted to...he didn't know what he wanted; only that he didn't want to watch this anymore. He turned and walked back inside slamming the large golden doors so hard they nearly shattered.

ooo

The slamming door awoke Pan from whatever spell it was that had gotten her into this slightly compromising position. She turned to the door, but there was no one there and she could not feel anyone inside who would have opened or closed it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I...I need to go."

"It's me who should be sorry," Kanata replied. "You are so much like my Pan," his hand came up to her face and gently brushed against her cheek, "you're exactly the same as she was when I last saw her...I just..."

Pan nodded in understanding and then quickly leapt into the air and fled to her room in the palace, while Kanata turned back to the stars and cursed the fates for the billionth time since he'd lost his friends all those years ago.

ooo

Vegeta, Gohan, Goten and the rest of the Z Fighters looked up as Akira stormed past them and up the stairs to the bedrooms. The older warriors exchanged confused glances, shrugged and then went back to their conversation.

"I still don't know," Tien said, "I mean, how do we really know that we can trust this guy?"

"He's Akira," Goten replied with a roll of his eyes, "of course we can trust him!"

Gohan sat at the table next to Vegeta and remained quiet, the Saiyan Prince was apparently lost in thought as he stared down at the floor. The discussion about Kanata's trustworthiness was going around in circles and interestingly enough wasn't all that different from the discussion they had at the Tenkaichi Budouia when they discovered Akira was more than he appeared.

_'Still,'_ the saiyan scholar mused, _'it doesn't hurt to be cautious.'_

Personally, Gohan was pretty sure they could trust the saiyan from the future, but that didn't mean that he was blind. Kanata was obviously hell bent on getting revenge, as hell bent as Vegeta had been on proving himself to be the strongest, and that had nearly had disastrous consequences on more than one occasion.

"What do you think Vegeta?" Goten asked, his voice rousing Gohan from his thoughts.

Vegeta was quiet for a moment and then replied without looking up, "His eyes are very cold...almost dead. I used to see the same eyes every time I looked in the mirror while I worked for Frieza..."

"Huh?" Trunks said, speaking for most of the warriors in the room.

Vegeta looked up and scowled at their ignorance, "He's a killer, just as I was, but he'll help us. Our goals and his are the same for now; just don't forget that he won't hesitate to use whatever means he deems necessary to accomplish those goals. Don't get in his way unless you really have to."

"Doesn't sound very trust worthy to me," Uubu noted.

"No, he isn't trustworthy," Vegeta said with a sigh, "but that doesn't mean he isn't going to make sure everyone here walks away from the battle tomorrow." He was quiet for a moment and then said, "We should get to bed, there will be much to do tomorrow."

The Z Fighters nodded and headed upstairs to their respective bedrooms, each wondering what the next day would bring and what had happened to Akira during those ten years to change him so much.

ooo

'_Damn it,'_ Pan cursed as she paced around her room. She felt more confused than she could ever remember feeling. She had almost kissed another man!

Okay, technically it was the _same_ man, but not really. Akira and Kanata were like ying and yang, one dark and one…well, lighter at least. Normally she would have thought of Akira as about as pure as a person who wasn't named Goku could be, but lately he'd become different. It was the dreams, of course, living in constant fear of falling asleep or of what he might do to the people he loved, but now that he knew what was behind the problem, he still wasn't reverting back to his old self. And that's desperately who she wanted him to be.

Not that it was fair to expect him to recover instantly, it hadn't even been a full day since Kanata arrived and removed the…whatever it was from Akira's head, but she still wanted her Akira back. She wanted him to look at her the way he used to, the way he had just a few weeks ago at the baseball park. Instead he was still avoiding her, maybe not physically anymore, but definitely avoiding her.

Before all this, they used to be able to talk for hours about anything and everything. A couple of minutes ago it had been like pulling teeth trying to get him to tell her about some of the most important things they could talk about.

And then there was Kanata. Yes, he was hiding something, no doubt afraid to open up to her because he'd spent ten years blaming himself for her future self's death and now he wouldn't let anyone in to forgive him for his perceived guilt. But the thing about him, part of the attraction that she couldn't completely deny, was that he looked at her like she was the most precious thing in the world. The way he silently worshipped her with his eyes was intoxicating. Akira hadn't ever looked at her like that, no one had. If her Akira would give her a look that was even a tenth as intense as the one Kanata gave her…well, it made her cheeks burn to think what she would do.

"Damn it," she repeated out loud this time, "Why can't you just be the Akira I fell in love with? The one I know you still are."

Again, she knew it wasn't a fair thing to ask of him so soon, but if he could just act the way he usually did or start moving in that general direction, the thing between her and Kanata would never have happened and she wouldn't be feeling nearly so guilty. Yes, that was it. This was all Akira's fault really, if he would have just snapped out of his little pity party, she wouldn't have found herself drawn to the future version of him.

It was such a terrible lie even she couldn't bring herself to believe it.

ooo

Bulma was waiting for Vegeta when he arrived in their room. The instant he stepped through the door, her arms were around him holding him tightly to her pajama clad body. For a moment the saiyan was taken aback at the sudden show of affection, but then he slowly allowed himself to melt into the embrace and even return it.

"I almost lost you today," she whispered. "If Akira hadn't come, you'd be dead."

Vegeta scowled, not really appreciating the insinuation that he couldn't take care of himself, but he wasn't going to start an argument with her when she was in this state.

It wasn't any fun to win when the other side wasn't fighting at full strength.

"You needn't worry yourself woman, I didn't die today and I don't plan on dying anytime soon," he told her in a gruff, but somehow soothing voice. "Tomorrow we will finish this and then you can go back to annoying me in peace."

She glared up at him for a moment and then smiled, "You love me for it and you know it."

Vegeta scoffed, "If you weren't so good at fixing the gravity machine and making babies I would have rid myself of you long ago."

Bulma gave him a look that would have made even the bravest warrior cringe, "So that's all I'm good for, huh?"

Vegeta didn't even flinch; years of playful banter with his mate had let him see when he was truly in trouble and when she was just looking for a reaction. He leaned in close and nipped at her neck just below her earlobe. "I suppose you have a few other _useful_ abilities," he whispered as his hands began to explore her still firm body.

She let out a small moan and then quietly said, "Tell me you love me…"

His hands stopped and he stepped away from her. "Why?"

"Please? I just want to hear it straight from you, just once."

"You know the answer, why is it so important if I say it or not?" he demanded, not really angry, just not wanting to deal with that "emotional stuff." She knew it, he knew it, everyone knew it, wasn't that enough?

"After today, after hearing that you'd been killed and couldn't be revived…even if it was in another timeline, I just don't want to go to bed tonight without hearing it from you when you have no other reason to say it than because I want to hear it and you want to tell me."

"Fine," he crossed his arms and scowled at her. "Iloveyou," the words were mumbled quickly and without emotion.

"No," she whispered, "I really need to hear it; just this once I need to hear you tell me how you feel, not what you hope will shut me up."

Vegeta clenched his fists and snarled, "Why is this so goddamn important to you silly humans? Do you really need me to tell you that I would die if I ever lost you? Don't you know that already? Don't you understand that I love you more time I see you?" Lightening crackled around him as his anger unconsciously caused his power level to rise. "If I didn't start to love you from the moment I arrived on this godforsaken planet after searching for Kakarot, I would have killed you by the second day if for no other reason than to stop your infernal yapping! Is that really what you need to hear?"

"Yes!" she yelled joyfully as she leapt into his arms and smothered his shocked face with passionate kisses, which quickly turned into other passionate things.

Vegeta wasn't entirely sure which part of his ranting had earned him this reward, but he vowed that he would figure it out as quickly as possible and tell it to her every night if it was really what she wanted to hear.

ooo

Elsewhere in the palace, a certain dark haired young man was tossing in his sleep. He wasn't being chased by the nightmares that had haunted him for weeks this time; instead he was haunted by the image that had been burned into his mind just before he turned in. The image that he had managed to twist from its true form into something far more hurtful in the few minutes between when he saw it and the when he finally fell asleep.

No longer was Pan simply leaning towards Kanata, now they were passionately kissing and staring right at him as they did it. Smiling as Pan metaphorically ripped out his heart and tossed it aside in favor of the darker, older version of himself.

Kami, he hated that man.

o

o

A/N: Blast, I was wrong again. The action still hasn't gotten here yet and might not fully materialize in the next chapter either. I THINK that the end of the next chapter and beginning of the following one should _finally_ have some action. I just have to get the different characters in their correct spots and it's taking longer than I thought. Given that this story is just sort of writing itself for the most part, I should stop trying to guess at what's coming and just say, "There will be action at some indeterminate point in the future, probably sooner rather than later, but maybe later rather than sooner." There, I think that covers all my bases as far as upcoming action is concerned. After delaying it as much as I have, I'll have to work real hard to make sure the action scenes are really good. The first couple will probably be a bit mild since they're going to be against weaker enemies, but I hope to make the last one truly excellent (on par with the last few chapters of the Ammit Saga, which I happen to think were pretty good). By the way, if the Vegeta and Bulma scene seemed rather dumb or out of place, I apologize, I just thought this chapter needed some semi light hearted scene and that was what my subconscious brain kicked out when I put my fingers on the keyboard, I take no responsibility (or credit) for the ramblings of my subconscious. Anyway, as always, thanks for the reviews!

TheTiny: I must fully agree that _Dark Force Rising_ is a great book. In fact, that trilogy was probably the best of the Star Wars books. I've read most of the ones that take place after Return of the Jedi and while some are good and others not so much (like the last few from the New Jedi Order, grr), those first three are just amazing.

Courtney: Goku will be in the next chapter. That's all I'll say on the matter.

Draco the Destroyer: Yeah, I know about TheTiny's story (I think it's in my C2), I just haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I fully intend to, but probably not until I'm all done with this…hopefully that means soon.

Toni the Mink: I can see what you mean about too much Akira, I'm trying to get the other characters in there too, but it's hard since what Akira (both versions) is thinking and feeling are going to be playing a pretty major role in what's to come. Don't worry, there's some good "other character" stuff coming (mostly Pan, but a little of everyone else as well).

Donkeykong27: Don't worry about the Arlean not being fleshed out, his story will come out over the course of the last few chapters. It's sort of hard to explain him when the heroes haven't actually encountered him yet, but it's coming. I guess this is sort of like Ammit where I have the main bad guy sort of hiding in the shadows until the very end, it's not exactly DBZ-ish, but I sort of enjoy the mystery a little.


	52. The Next Morning

**Chapter 52: The Next Morning**

o

As he always did, Gohan awoke with the sunrise. Unfortunately, given how high the Lookout was in the air, the sunrise occurred very early in the morning. Despite the early hour, he pushed himself up in the bed and closed his eyes in peaceful meditation.

Today was the day. The future could be changed in just a few hours; he and his family would survive. He wouldn't find his mother lying in a pool of blood in her bed today and his daughter wouldn't be murdered in a warehouse in a few weeks. The Akira from the future had ensured that things would be different this time, just as Mirai Trunks had done before the androids had arrived.

In a way it was frightening to know that twice now his family and friends had actually been killed off. For whatever reason, the fates had decreed that the Son family was allowed to have "do overs," but Gohan knew that couldn't always last. Sooner or later either time or life itself would catch up with them. It was a scary thought, but it was the natural order of things. People lived and then they died, either of old age or something else, but eventually he and all of his friends would die unless they wished for immortality with the dragonballs and none of them wanted to do that.

He contemplated that thought for a moment and then began to softly chuckle; despite all of the extraordinary things that he had seen and done, he would still get old and die just like anyone else. It made him wonder what it would be like to live a "normal" life, to not have to worry about a new powerful alien, or android, or demon, or deity coming to Earth to destroy it unless his family and friends were able to prevail yet again.

_'It would probably get pretty boring,'_ he concluded, _'but it might be nice too.'_

He glanced down at his still sleeping wife and smiled as he gently brushed her long dark hair out of her eyes. She was as beautiful as the first day he set eyes on her, maybe even more so. Sometimes he wondered if she ever regretted marrying into a family of powerful warriors where the extraordinary was almost common place. She had given a lot to be with him, the constant worrying whenever he or Pan went off on another adventure or to fight a new alien menace, but she took it all in stride and still loved him no matter what.

He really was the luckiest man on Earth.

The luckiest man on Earth's wife grumbled something in her sleep and snuggled closer to his warm body and bringing another happy smile to his face.

They would win today, not because of Kanata or Akira or anyone else, but because they all had family for whom they would defeat any foe and move any mountain just so they could come home to those they loved and enjoy another long or brief period of peace.

ooo

Kanata had also risen early, though he had decided to take a walk out to the courtyard so he could ponder the crossroads he had reached in his decade long journey. He knew he couldn't deny that he loved this Pan as much as he had loved the one from his own timeline. The two were technically identical. Both had had the exact same experiences and lives up until yesterday, the only difference between them was that this Pan would have to go through all of the pain that the other had.

And so, in his mind, he stood and looked down each path before him. Down one was his ultimate revenge, the death of the Arlean in his timeline. But after he'd killed his antagonist what would he have left? What sort of life could he live without his friends...without Pan? There would be nothing to live for, of that he was certain. If he survived the battle, he would only be waiting around to die, waiting for the damnation he had earned himself.

On the other hand, if he took the second path, he would kill the Arlean of this timeline and then remain here. Remain with Pan. He wouldn't have to be alone anymore. Of course there was the problem of his foolish younger self here, but Akira would have to deal with it if Pan came to the realization that he was just a foolish, little boy and decided to be with someone who could truly appreciate her. And even if, for whatever reason, Pan chose this timelines Akira, maybe Kanata could live with just loving her quietly from a far…no, probably not. If Pan chose Akira, Kanata would have to go back to the other road.

Kanata scowled at himself. What kind of monster goes back in time and steals his own girlfriend away from himself or at least his past self? Perhaps a better question would be what kind of selfishness does it take to slaughter millions of people in order to bring less than two dozen back from the dead? Kanata didn't particularly like either question, but what was done was done. He could change things in this timeline, but his own was already set and Pan's decision would be made eventually. He wouldn't go out of his way to make sure that she stayed with her Akira, but he also wouldn't attempt to manipulate her into choosing him.

Regardless of her choice, he wasn't sure he could just let the Arlean from his timeline get away with the injustice he had committed...Perhaps his course was already more set than he'd realized.

The saiyan from the future walked to the edge of the Lookout and sat down, partially wishing for the simpler times he had enjoyed when he was still called "Akira."

ooo

Akira wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep when his eyes snapped open, but despite feeling more rested than he had in over a week, he knew he hadn't been all that long. If you could even call it sleep. For the first time in almost two weeks he hadn't dreamed about killing anyone, but his dreams had been just as painful to watch. The events of the previous night had haunted his dreams and still would not leave him now that he was awake.

He scowled and ground his teeth. How could Pan do that to him? How could she kiss that bastard?

…Did she kiss that bastard? His exhausted mind was having trouble separating what he had actually seen from his dreams and fears. In the end, it didn't really matter; the real question was why couldn't Pan see what Kanata really was?

He closed his eyes again and took a deep breath; there were more important things to deal with at the moment. He would have to worry about the Kanata-Pan situation after this Arlean fellow was taken care of.

Yes, that was it, he just had to focus on the task at hand and forget about those two. Hell, if that's what Pan was into, if she wanted a bastard that would lie to her then maybe she deserved him.

He climbed out of bed and found a new set of clothes laid out for him either by Mr. Popo or some sort of palace magic. After pulling them on, he set his jaw and marched downstairs to get breakfast and ignore Pan and her new "friend."

As it turned out, Pan was the only one sitting at the table. Akira could feel the others scattered around the palace, no doubt still waking up and preparing themselves for the possible battle that was to come.

"Good morning," Pan said, looking up from her breakfast.

Akira scowled and looked away, seriously contemplating using Instant Transmission to go visit King Kai and Piccolo rather than remain on the same planet as Pan and Kanata.

"Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" Pan asked, gracing him with a small smile she hoped would let him know that she was teasing and also that she was sorry about the previous night's fight.

The muscles in Akira's jaw flexed as he ground his teeth and continued to seethe.

At this point Pan began to realize that Akira was either more upset by their fight the night before than she'd realized or had found a new thing to be angry about.

"What's wrong?" she asked in confusion.

Akira turned and glared at her, his eyes full of barely contained fury and pain. "I'm surprised you even have to ask," he hissed and then stood and stormed off into the depths of the palace.

Pan remained in her seat, completely stunned. What had she done to deserve that?

Her mind quickly supplied at least one possible answer, but she shook it away. Nothing had happened between her and Kanata! Besides, Akira hadn't seen the tiny thing that maybe sort of happened. Her thoughts pulled up the memory of the door slamming that had insured that nothing did happen.

She winced, _'This could be really, really bad.'_

ooo

The first thing Trunks' brain brought to his attention when his eyes slowly opened and stared up at the ceiling was that something nearby smelled very nice, like some sort of flower maybe... It was at this point that the second piece of information registered; there was something very warm and very soft pressing against his body under the covers.

Trunks came fully awake and glanced down at the sleeping form of his fiancé.

_'What the hell?'_

He couldn't think of why she would be in his bed, after all, it had been her idea to wait until they were married. Something about not wanting to be just another lay to him. As if she could ever have been anything like that! Still, it was what she wanted, so he'd agreed without a second thought and done his best to keep his mind out of the gutter when he looked at her. He dimly recalled her telling him that she couldn't sleep last night and asking if he would hold her for a while.

He was pretty sure he had been on his best behavior last night, but his mind was definitely heading towards the gutter right now, which meant that he should probably get out of bed.

As gently and smoothly as possible he slipped out from under her and climbed out of the comfortable bed. Moments later he had put on some clean clothes and, after placing a soft kiss on Icalla's forehead, was heading downstairs for breakfast.

He entered the dinning hall just in time to see Akira storming out and Pan looking either guilty, shocked, or a mixture of the two.

She looked up at Trunks and blushed; obviously embarrassed that he had witnessed the little of lovers' quarrel.

"Uh...I guess it's a bit late to say good morning, huh?" he said, giving her a sheepish smile and sitting down next to her.

The two sat in an uncomfortable silence for a moment until finally Trunks cleared his throat and asked, "So, should we keep ignoring the enormous elephant doing handstands in the corner, or do you want to talk about it?"

Pan rolled her eyes and said, "There's nothing to talk about, Akira's just being stupid."

"Hmm," Trunks stroked his chin and looked off into the distance for a second before saying, "Yeah, he _is_ like that sometimes...of course, usually when he's stupid it's you that's storming off and him that's left wondering what he said wrong."

Pan gave him an appraising look for a moment and then said, "You're not nearly as clueless as you act. Icalla's a lucky woman."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure she's just taking pity on me, but thanks. So, what did you do to get Akira like that?"

"Nothing!" Pan yelled, "Nothing happened!"

Trunks sighed and rubbed his temples, "Every time I've ever said, 'nothing happened' something DID happen."

Pan opened her mouth to protest, but shut it a moment later without saying word. The two quickly ate the rest of their breakfast in silence while the rest of the Z Fighters slowly began to arrive.

ooo

Bulma awoke to find herself surprisingly still on top of her husband who had propped himself up a little and was looking down at her with amusement.

"Ugh, what time is it?" she asked as she pushed her aqua colored hair out of her face.

"Past time for us to be awake."

"Why didn't you get out of bed then?" she asked.

"I..." he broke off and glanced away, the faintest bit of pink tinting his cheeks. "You were lying on top of me, how was I supposed to get up?"

"Like fear of waking me has ever kept you in bed before," Bulma replied with a roll of her eyes.

"Fine!" he growled and climbed out of bed, spilling Bulma onto the floor in a tangle of sheets.

"Jerk!" she yelled as she struggled to get to her feet.

Vegeta ignored her and began getting dressed. When he was done, he walked to the door without a second glance back.

"Vegeta, wait!" Bulma called after him, he paused and looked back over his shoulder at her. "I love you," she whispered.

He smirked and walked out the door leaving Bulma wishing that he could have told her the same thing he said last night, but knowing that that was probably a once in a life time declaration of love from her Prince.

Lucky for him he'd done such a good job of it last night.

ooo

It took a few hours before most of the Z Fighters and their families were up and either eating breakfast or at least sitting at the table carrying on quiet conversations. For some reason the potential upcoming battle wasn't weighing quite as heavily on their minds as it had on the mornings of their fights with Cell, Ammit, and the countless other threats they'd faced. Whether it was because they were all alive and together or because Kanata was with them was hard to say, but certainly the idea of having three fighters capable of Super Saiyan Three or higher made them feel much more confident.

The only person missing from the table now was Akira who had not returned after his run in with Pan. Most of those seated didn't know that he was even awake, assuming that he was still resting after having gone so long without sleep.

Pan was sitting quietly in her seat, neither eating nor talking. She wished she could feel Akira somewhere nearby; she desperately wanted to go talk to him. She wasn't sure if she wanted to apologize or just slap some sense into him, but she knew she needed to talk to him.

Beside her, Kanata was shoveling food into his mouth as fast as he could, unable to believe how good the food here was. The mess hall on Heata #00 could never in a million years have produced a breakfast like this or a dinner like the one he'd had the pleasure of enjoying last night.

_'Of course, the company might have something to do with how much better this tastes too,'_ he thought as he glanced at Pan out of the corner of his eye. Obviously something was bothering her, but he didn't really have time to worry about it right now.

Now was time for him to start his quest for revenge.

"We should get going soon," he said, pushing his now empty plate away and standing. "The quicker this is over with, the better." The rest of the Z Fighters nodded and began to stand as well, but Kanata signaled them to remain seated. "Before we go, there's something I should tell you all, but first, where is Akira?"

Pan looked down at the floor as soon as she heard the name Akira.

Trunks waited for a moment, wondering if she was going to say anything, before deciding to speak up, "He was here earlier, but I think he decided to take a walk through the palace." It was sort of true.

Kanata scowled, "Whatever, if he's still going to pout then so be it." He took a deep breath and then said, "I have a message for you all from Goku."

The room instantly fell into stunned silence.

ooo

_Giru finished with the preparations for the time jump and then wandered out of the room without saying a word to its other occupant. Akira smiled and leaned back in his chair._

_It was happening. It was finally happening. After all these years, he was going to have his chance to wish his friends back and then get his revenge on the Arlean. After that he could die, there wouldn't be anything left for him to do in this life anyway. He would accept his punishment with his head held high, knowing that the greater good had been done. His mistake would be rectified, his real crime would be undone, and the largest injustice the universe had ever dished out would finally be fixed._

_The countdown on the computer reached zero and a bright tear opened up in the darkness of space, swallowing the ship whole before closing again. The time machine trembled slightly as it made its way upstream in the river of time, but according to Giru this was to be expected. All total, the trip would feel like it took three hours, but in reality it would take negative 86,427 hours, just less than ten years._

_Akira stood and headed back to the gravity room, deciding he needed to work out the nervous energy that was surging through his body. As he walked the tight halls he glanced down at himself. He couldn't train for too long, he still needed to shower and change out of his cracked and blood stained armor._

_The moment he entered the gravity room he set the machine to 100G, not a tough setting, but it would give him a decent work out. He waited for a few seconds as the extra gravity kicked in and then began one of the complex katas Vegeta had taught him during happier times on Earth. Akira was only half way through it when a voice called out from behind, startling him out of his rhythm._

_"You do that pretty well, but I think Vegeta made it look a little more natural."_

_Akira spun around and stared at the visitor for a moment, before letting his face fall into a scowl._

_"What are you doing here?" he asked._

_"Interestingly enough, when you're in between times, you're actually pretty close to the dragon realm, so I thought I'd stop by and see how you were doing," Goku replied with a relaxed smile. "By the way, during that last series, you need to keep your left arm up a bit more. You were leaving your neck unprotected."_

_"So you're just here to say hi, huh?" Akira growled as he turned back to his kata, "Are you sure you didn't come to preach to me about the 'dark path' I've taken? Maybe tell me about all the suffering I've caused?"_

_"Hey, it's your life; you can make your own decisions."_

_"You sure about that?"_

_Goku rolled his eyes as his smile faded. "I'm not going to say that you did the right thing, you didn't, and there will probably be consequences for it, but obviously you're in control of things. If you weren't, do you really think I would have let you spend the last ten years the way you did?"_

_"So if you aren't here to say I told you so, what do you want?" Akira said as he tried running through the kata again, this time with his left arm a fraction of an inch higher, "You and I didn't exactly say part on the best of terms last time, but I doubt you're here to try and make friends."_

_"Well, it would be nice if we could be friends, but I kind of doubt you're interested. What I was hoping is that you would deliver a message for me," Goku said with a small grin._

_Akira's left arm blocked and imaginary attack as his right one counterattacked. "A message?" His foot shot out and took his invisible opponents legs out from under him. The saiyan quickly spun and ducked under another attack as he continued to glide through the well practiced motions._

_"I just want you to let everyone know that I'm doing fine, that I'll see them again one day, but probably not until after they've crossed over and also that I miss them."_

_"I'm not going to be seeing them that long," Akira replied as he noticed with a good deal of annoyance that his movements felt more natural this time through. Did Goku have to be better at everything? "I'm just going to save Bulma, Vegeta, and the Nameks. Once I make my wishes, I'm leaving and they're on their own."_

_There was a look in Goku's eyes that made Akira think that the younger-looking man knew something he didn't. "Well, if for some reason you do get the chance, let them know, okay?"_

_"Whatever."_

_"Oh, and before I forget, your friend Cypress was right. No one, not even you, is beyond redemption. If you turn away from this darkness, you can still be saved." _

_A ki blast passed through Goku's head and slammed into the wall on the far side of the room as the legendary saiyan's after image faded away._

_"Fuck you!" Akira growled as his anger triggered his Super Saiyan transformation, "I don't need to listen to your preaching! I didn't ask for you to come here."_

_Goku reappeared on the other side of the room, his own golden aura swirling around him as he smiled at the angry saiyan. "I'm just telling it like it is," he said, dropping into a defensive stance, "no reason to take it so personally."_

_Akira let out a roar of rage and charged forward, his fists and feet lashing out in a blur of motion. Goku seemed to flow around the attacks like water, nothing Akira threw at him even seemed to come close to connecting. After a few minutes, the legendary saiyan's fist shot straight threw his opponent's defenses and sent him crashing to the ground._

_"Damn it," Akira muttered as he took deep gulps of air. "Is this all in my head again? I can't beat you because my mind won't let me?"_

_"No," Goku replied with a stern face, "This time you were just fighting badly. I'm as close to really being here as I can possibly be, but you're too filled with anger and hatred to think clearly enough to fight." Goku powered down and offered a hand to help Akira up._

_Akira scowled and swatted the hand away as he pulled himself to his feet._

_"I'm not your enemy, you know," Goku said with a sigh, "No matter how you feel about me, I just want to see you find some peace."_

_"There won't ever be any peace for me," Akira whispered._

_"It doesn't have to be that way," the younger looking saiyan said, he paused and then added, "Do you really think this is what Pan would have wanted?"_

_Akira's hands clenched into fists and squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that tried to fight their way out from under his eyelids. "No," he conceded, "but it's too late for that. I have to keep going…I have to make things right."_

_Goku gave him a sad look of resignation and then said, "I need to be going, but please, if you see them, tell my family I love them...especially Chi-chi, tell her I miss her too."_

_And then he was gone and Akira was left struggling with his conflicting emotions. In the end, nothing would stop him. He had to revive his friends and kill the Arlean. If peace and salvation actually existed outside of the story books, he would worry about them after he'd had his fill of revenge._

ooo

Of course Kanata didn't tell them the whole story. In fact, the story they got couldn't even be called a half truth, more like a story sort of inspired by actual events. He told them that Goku was able to visit him while he was traveling through time and that their friend wanted to tell them that he loved and missed them all and that he would see them someday. He left out the very one sided fight with his semi-creator as well as any reference to his ten years spent purging planets for the changeling Heata.

When he was finished, most of the women had tears in their eyes, especially Pan, Chi-chi and Bulma. Gohan and Goten looked like they might like to cry, but were putting up a good fight against the tears anyway. Vegeta's expression would lead an uninformed observer to believe that he couldn't care less about Goku's message, but a softness around his eyes told otherwise. The rest of the group were probably enjoying found memories of their long, lost friend. Regardless, it was time for them to wake up and prepare for what could be a difficult battle.

"Now, no matter what happens today, you all know what he wanted to tell you," he glanced around the room and then said, "So if my missing young counterpart would grace us with his presence perhaps we could go finish off a murderer."

"Then let's go," Akira said as he calmly walked into the room, his eyes locked on Kanata and refusing to shift the short distance they would have to move to center on Pan. "I was just waiting for _story_ time to end." Whether the others heard it or not, the way Akira said "story" let Kanata know that the younger man thought it was just that, a story. Not the truth or even a half truth, just a little fairy tale.

Kanata smiled tightly at Akira and then said, "Anyone who wants to come is welcome, though at least a few of you should stay behind to guard your families. Make your decisions now and let's get this over with."

There was little discussion on the matter as most of the warriors had realized the previous night that it wouldn't make sense for all of them to descend upon the cave that Akira, Kanata, and Pan said the Alrean was living in. Goten, Uubu, Yamcha, and Chiaotzu volunteered to remain almost instantly and Krillin was informed in no uncertain terms by his wife that he would be the one remaining behind this time. Apparently the former monk had seen it coming because he didn't bother arguing.

"You should stay too," Kanata told Pan with a worried look.

"You've got to be joking," she scoffed, "I'm not sitting around here when I should be helping you guys."

The saiyan from the future was quiet for a moment and then said, "I lost you once, I won't let it happen again…please, stay."

She crossed her arms, "No. I'm as much a warrior as you, I'm going."

Kanata sighed and then looked to Akira, of all places, for help, "Tell her to stay, she'll listen to you."

Akira turned away from the entire group and started walking out the door. "She's a big girl," he said without looking back, "she can make her own decisions."

Pan wasn't sure if Akira had just taken a shot at her or if he really believed that she should be the one to decide, but she suspected it was the first option. However he had meant it, she was going and no one was going to stop her.

And maybe after this mess was cleaned up she could figure out what she was going to do with her two Akiras.

The departing Z Fighters followed Akira outside and hopped off the side of the Lookout, flying towards the mountains just to the north of East Capital.

o

o

A/N: I don't know if I can argue that the little fight with Goku could be considered an "action scene" (since I said there would be one at the end of this chapter), but obviously there will be more action in the next chapter. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Please review and let me know what you think.

Courtney: I'm glad you liked the last chapter that much. It feels like I've gone forever since I last had a good action scene so I kind of worry that the story gets boring without them. Since there isn't much I can do about it because the action can't come until I get past all this other stuff, it's good to hear that these chapters are still being well received. And yeah, that probably is about the weirdest love triangle out there, that's what makes it so much fun to write!

TheTiny: Yeah, New Jedi Order was a bit strange. Actually, I would have liked it if they hadn't killed off my favorite character (seriously, how can you kill Anakin Solo, especially when Jacen is such a whiny, little sissy? They killed the wrong brother).

Nadz: Hey! I thought you'd up and vanished on me. I can understand your reasons for not reviewing, but I've actually had this general idea of Kanata/Akira since I first decided that he would become a darker character, so you don't need to worry about pushing me to take him in a direction I wasn't going to. I just hadn't thought of him being similar to Anakin Skywalker until you mentioned it. As for a sequel and which timeline it would take place in, I don't know...if I write a sequel it wouldn't be for a while, I've been writing this and the Ammit saga for over a year now and frankly I'm a bit sick of it. Maybe after I've finished and taken a break I'll be more inclined to write another one, but right now I don't plan on it. Anyway, thanks for the review, it's good to know you're still following the story.

Toni the Mink: Don't worry, 18 will get her moment in the sun...or at least will get a chance to fight. By the time the "last battle" rolls around, there won't really be any need for her to stay behind, but thanks for reminding me, I'd almost forgotten about her.

Francis Keenan: That's an interesting point, Akira is starting to act a bit more like Kanata...I didn't really plan it that way, but I kind of like it now that I think about it.


	53. Dasala the Slave

**Chapter 53: Dasala the Slave**

o

"_Get back to work, maggot."_

_The order came simultaneously from the large, reptilian guard and from the little, silver box in his hand. To refuse the guard was to invite a long and painful execution, to refuse the controller was to invite a slow liquidation of the brain, but the strong will could resist for a little while, just long enough to prove that even slaves have some free will._

"_I said back to work!" there was a small electric hum and then a loud crack as the whip came down hard upon the naked back of the slaves who, in order to pretend that freedom existed, had not immediately jumped to his feet and hurried back into the dark mine._

_The slave screamed in pain, slowly stood up, and with a hidden look of murderous rage, casually made his way into the tunnel. The guards commands and the pain that resulted from his mini rebellion reminded him of the way the universe operated, but the moment of freedom, regardless of how fleeting or imaginary it was, just before the whip came down reminded him of what he had to look forward to once he found away to gain power, once he was the one holding the whip._

_In truth, the whip itself wasn't that bad, it was the electric current flowing through it that did the real damage. One advantage of having skin made up mostly of an exoskeleton was the decreased number of nerve endings that the outside world had access to; however, the electric pulse set all of them on fire at once and some of the internal ones as well._

_The slave sighed; sadly his people's evolution wasn't enough to overcome all of the evils the galaxy had to offer, probably nothing was._

"_Hey, Desala, right?" a second slave, named Alair, whispered once they were far enough away from the guards not to be overheard. When the first slave nodded, Alair asked, "Why do you always annoy the guards like that? Do you have a death wish or something?"_

"_Anything is better than this place."_

"_Yeah, well, you must not have seen the way they send you to that better place?"_

"_No, I've seen it," Desala replied with a tight voice. For as long as he lived he would never forget that. Any slave that the masters decided to make an example of were first stripped completely naked and paraded back and forth just outside the slave holding area while being beaten by the executioners, so that all of the hapless soul's fellow slaves could see him or her. After that, in the middle the holding area, the bleeding and naked slave was forced onto a table where his or her appendages were removed or broken, and then the slave was cut open and slowly dissected while a life support machine made sure that death was not granted until the very, very end. The screams of those who had been executed were not the cries of intelligent beings, they were the screams of animals in pain, all sentient thought was lost during the executions and with good reason, but then again, the slaves were little more than animals now anyway, just beasts of burden waiting to die. Dasala's brother and wife had both gone through it as had many of his friends, at night their screams still echoed in his mind._

"_Then maybe you ought to keep it in mind when you go disobeying orders, huh?" Akair said as the two descended into the darkness of the mine. They walked in silence for awhile, following a well worn path down into the depths of the planet, their rags offering little protection from the cold air. Finally Alair spoke up, "So, how long have you been here?"_

"_Too long," Desala said._

"_Life sentence?"_

_It was a nice way of asking if Desala was a criminal who had been forced into slavery as a punishment. Many of those on the planet were there because they had committed violent crimes in a star system where slavery took the place of jail sentences, but Desala's people weren't space faring, they hadn't had any contact with other species until recently. If only things had turned out differently back home, Desala wouldn't have found himself here, the last surviving member of the first Arlean slaves sold off._

"_Just picked the wrong side in a coup," the tall insectiod said with a sigh._

"_Where you the only one sent off world?" Alair asked as he and Desala began shifting through the rocks in search of the precious metals that made this horrible planet worth inhabiting._

"_No…" his voice trailed off as painful memories slowly bubbled their way to the surface, "There were about twenty of us. We used to be members of Prince Atla's court, but they're all gone…even my wife, she was executed nearly a year ago."_

"_Oh…I'm sorry."_

"_Don't be. She was lucky."_

ooo

The alien now known as The Arlean sighed as his thoughts returned to the present and he tried to decide which of the blind females crowded in one of the side rooms he would take today. None of them would ever match the beauty of his wife, but she was long gone and if their race was going to survive and grow, he was going to have to reproduce. These creatures were rather pathetic, but it could have been worse; after all, they did have a certain alluring quality to them and they were genetically compatible with his species; beggars couldn't be choosers.

Occasionally he wondered what his wife would have thought of his plan; he could almost see the shocked and disgusted expression on her face if he closed his eyes while mating. She wouldn't understand of course, she hadn't suffered the way he had. She had never realized that there was no such thing as good or right in the universe, right and good were whatever those with power decided they would be.

His people had not had physical power and that fool who had taken control of the planet had probably not encouraged them to become as technologically or mentally powerful as they were capable, that is why they were dead now. That is why the beautiful planet Arlea with its rolling hills of red gratoma grass and its pristine cities was gone, destroyed by the saiyans.

The Arlean made his choice, grabbing one of the larger insectiod aliens and dragging her kicking and screaming out of the room while her fellow prisoners cowered in the corner unable and unwilling to come to her rescue.

Yes, it was a dirty business bringing an entire race back from the brink of extinction, but he would do it so that the Arlean people or at least a new Arlean people would be able to rise again. This time they would know how the universe worked, they wouldn't think that because they were lovers of peace and tranquility everyone else was too. They would know that only the strong survive, only those that could gain power and use it to the betterment of their own would be worthy of continued existence.

The humans would learn that lesson soon enough. They would either bow before their new leader or suffer under the whip, just as he had. These people who had allowed the vile saiyans to live among them, even to reproduce with them, would make their choice and live or die with the consequences. The Alrean once known as Desala, who in another life had played with his children and painted in his free time when he wasn't helping his young prince mold their world into a beautiful utopia, would teach them the way the universe worked, just as he had been taught by his former masters before he slaughtered them.

He smiled as he threw his now whimpering captive to the ground in his personal quarters and tore away her rags, tossing them against the wall as he gazed lustfully at her naked body.

Yes, once the saiyans had been exterminated, the universe would see just how well he'd learned his lesson.

He pulled her to him and then…

"Master!"

The Arlean roughly pushed the female away from him and turned to the dark haired young man who had just run into the room, the young man who was made in the image of Arlea's destroyers, but controlled by the last of the planet's people.

"What is it?" he wasn't embarrassed that the clone had seen him preparing to mate with another of his concubines; the clone wasn't really a person to him so there was nothing to be embarrassed about. The clone might as well have been a computer or a pet as far as the Arlean was concerned.

"The saiyans are approaching!"

"What?" the insectiod gasped, "How is that possible? There is no way they could have discovered our location."

"I do not know master, but they are heading straight for us."

The Arlean was silent for a moment and then suddenly the piece of the puzzle that he had been missing clicked into place, "Those damn dragonballs on Namek!" He cursed the nameks and their magic for the thousandth time since he'd discovered the hand they'd played in so many of the saiyans' battles.

"Which ones are coming?" he asked as he regained his composure, now was not the time to lose one's head or to worry about what could not be undone. The nameks would pay in due time and there were more important things to think about. If the saiyans came in force, there would be a battle and it was possible that all might be lost, but several of them had been in fights the day before. If they came thinking that they would find the cave unprotected, the clone could destroy them all before they even realized how badly they'd miscalculated.

"Prince Vegeta is among them, as is his son and the one known as Gohan," the clone reported dutifully, "I believe that the girl is with them as well as one of the humans…Krillin or Tien, it is difficult to say for certain which."

"There are no others? The boy is not with them? Or the new comer?"

"I cannot sense either of them, but the boy is able to mask his power just as I am, so it would be impossible to know. As for the new one, I do not sense him either, though I was able to when he fought yesterday, so I believe that he has remained behind."

The Arlean smiled almost gleefully, only four saiyans and possible a weakened fifth. It wouldn't be an easy fight if they came at the clone all at once, but Vegeta had a habit of wanting to prove his dominance in one on one battles. Once he was out of the way, the others, who were not full-time warriors, would be easily disposed of.

"Perfect, they have acted rashly and will pay the price for it. Even if Akira is with them, he will not have completely recovered from his time spent fighting the enslaving probe nor from his battle with 02. You will be able to defeat him just as easily as you will defeat Vegeta and the rest of them." The Arlean glanced at the insectoid female who was blindly groping her way around the room, looking for a place to hide or at least for something to cover herself up with. "Destroy them quickly and when you are done, head to the guardian's palace and kill the rest. Notify me when you are finished."

The clone bowed his head, "As you command, master."

o

o

A/N: I feel like I should apologize for this sort of random, short chapter. I know it gives some much needed background on the enemy of this story (and since we're 53 chapters in, I suppose now is a good time to give that background), but this wasn't the way I'd initially planned on revealing who the Arlean was. In the immortal (or not) words of Dan Ackroid in Ghostbusters, "I couldn't help it…it just popped in there." Anyway, there will be another chapter in a few days, so don't sweat this being short, you'll get more soon enough.

A/N: Alair is a Latin name meaning "happy" (good name for a slave, don't you think?). Dasala: "Dasa" means "a slave" in Indian and all known members of the Arlean race have names that end in "lia" (female, Queen Lemlia) or "la" (male, Prince Atla). Of course having only two names to go by doesn't exactly make it a rule or anything, but I thought it would be sort of funny, so there you have it. I seem to recall telling people in the past that I wasn't going to name The Arlean, but as this chapter started to form itself in my head I realized that I couldn't just call him "the first slave" or "slave" or anything else and so I was forced to name him. I don't how much more he'll be referred to by this name outside of this chapter (it might show up in a flashback or two), but giving it to him here sort of made him into a bit of a real person. Anyway, thanks for reading, please let me know what you think.

Draco the Destroyer: Here are the answers to your three questions.

1. Goku did say he was about as there as he possibly could be, which is rather ambiguous now that I think about it. He also said that it wasn't all just inside Kanata/Akira's head and that during time travel Kanata/Akira is actually kind of close to the "dragon realm." Anyway, in short, "yes" Goku was actually there, it wasn't a dream.

2. This will be answered in the next chapter or the one after depending on how descriptive I feel.

3. Um…honestly, I kind of forgot about it, but that's not so bad because I can work it in there now that you've reminded me. I suppose I could argue that without them being stuck together on the island like they were in the other timeline the relationship hasn't had a chance to develop, but I really did just forget (though there was the one scene when Vegeta and the Gohan, Goten, Trunks, and Uubu were going to go gather the rest of the Z Fighters and Uubu quickly offered to be the one to get Bra).

Toni the Mink: Wow, that has to be the most…er, _enthusiastic_ response to a quick update that I've ever seen! I don't know if I was feeling especially inspired or not, mostly that chapter was just a continuation of the last and so I already knew what was going to happen, it was just a matter of writing it down. I laughed when I read that you want Pan to choose Akira because Kanata's a jerk and old. After all those stories out there about Pan and Trunks (which I know you don't like)…technically, Kanata is closer to her age than Trunks! Maybe she has a thing for older guys. Anyway, I'll finish the story as quickly as I can; it's all just a matter of real life giving me the time to do it.

Courtney: I'm glad I was able to make you sympathize with Kanata, I kind of want him to be a bit of a tragic character and it's hard to do that when he's just a jerk. Maybe I can get that sort of response to the Arlean too…won't that just be fun? I personally like the Goku and Chi-Chi couple also; they aren't as funny as Vegeta and Bulma (though sometimes Chi-Chi's neuroticisms get them close), but they're a lot cuter in my not-so-humble opinion.

Nova Flame: I don't know if you've gotten this far, but it looks like you will soon so I'll just answer all of your questions here. First off, back in the Ammit Saga when Akira and Pan are in the gravity room and they turn the gravity to 10G that means that they are in 10 times the normal gravity so they would weigh ten times as much. Of course this also means that I was wrong when I said 10,000 lbs, it should have just been 1,000 (100 lbs now 1,000 lbs so Akira would be between 1,500 and 1,800 since I think his weight is somewhere in there). For your review of chapter 45, there is a reason that the clone can't go as high as Akira, most of it will be explained in a later chapter though. Anyway, thanks for the reviews I'm glad that you like the story so far.


	54. The Last of the Clones

**Chapter 54: The Last of the Clones**

o

The flight towards the cave that housed the Arlean passed in a silence that was uncomfortable for some and baffling for others. Not that a journey to a battle was usually filled with laughter and happy conversations, but normally people at least said _something_.

That was not the case this time. Kanata was so completely focused on his approaching revenge that the rest of the world has ceased to exist for him. Akira was so focused on his hatred of Kanata and his hurt feelings over the betrayal that he had partially witnessed and partially invented that he too was off in his own little world. Pan was trying to figure out why her life had to be so complicated and wishing that it was easier to separate her feelings for each of the two versions of Akira. Vegeta was being Vegeta. Eighteen was being Eighteen and not particularly caring about the little, twisted love triangle that had apparently formed since it didn't involve her daughter, husband, or brother.

Only Trunks, Gohan, and Tien were willing to speak to each other and so the three of them were flying at the back of the pack quietly discussing the strange tension between Akira and Pan that had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere. Trunks was actually wishing that he could think of a way to change the subject as he felt like the conversation between Pan and himself should remain confidential even if no real information had come out of it. Unfortunately, when it came to Pan Gohan was not easily sidetracked.

"So you don't have any idea what's going on?" he quietly asked the lavender haired saiyan.

"Not really," Trunks replied, "just that Akira's mad about something."

"Well, that's obvious enough," Tien said, "but what's he mad about and more importantly, is it going to cause trouble if we find trouble when we get to wherever it is that we're going?"

The three were quiet for a moment, their white auras silently cutting through the clouds as they followed the two other warriors with similar auras and the three that seemed to be traveling completely without.

Finally Gohan said, "He won't do anything that endangers us, he's too smart for that."

"Yeah," Trunks added, "he knows what's at stake and with Pan here he'll be extra careful."

"Maybe," Tien said thoughtfully as the group began a decent that would place them at the base of a large mountain, "but I think we should do our best to keep an eye on him still. I mean, he's been dreaming of killing us for over a week, he might not have completely recovered yet."

The two demi-saiyans nodded in agreement and then began focusing on what was to come.

ooo

A shadow watched the eight warriors land at the base of the mountain. There were more of them than he'd expected and both Akira and the powerful new comer had come along. He considered retreating back to the cave and attempting to ambush them rather than attacking them head on, but a tingling sensation on the right side of his head informed him that he would not be allowed to do that.

For a very brief moment the thought of disobeying his master ran through his mind. A second later his head began to throb painfully and then stopped almost as quickly as it had begun, just a reminder of who it was that called the shots. The clone refocused on the supposed protectors of Earth and prepared himself for the battle that was going to break out.

The human, called Tien, wasn't going to be much of a threat, he was well past his prime; however, the data the Arlean had collected on him said that he was capable of some incredible attacks. At least one of them seemingly was able to even surpass the limit of his power level. That could be troublesome at first, but once the clone had powered up even those attacks wouldn't be able to harm him much.

The android could be trouble if the Z Fighters attacked all at once. On her own she wasn't much stronger than a Super Saiyan, but the fact that she could not be sensed would give her the element of surprise if she came at him from behind. He would have to kill her quickly to be on the safe side.

Three of the saiyans were less dedicated to the legacy of their race than Vegeta. Pan, Gohan, and Trunks were powerful to be sure, but unless they were all attacking at once, they posed no real threat. However, the clone had been told by his master that Gohan had incredible powers that could manifest themselves at rather inopportune times; he would have to be taken down early as apparently his hidden power was based on his emotions. The other two had no known abilities that could increase their powers the way Gohan could, so they would be little more than nuisances.

Akira was weakened; even from a distance the clone could see the fatigue on his double's face. It was possible that he could still be dangerous, as no accurate measurement of his full power had ever been taken. Fortunately, in his exhausted (or nearly exhausted) state he would not be at a hundred percent and could probably be taken out quickly enough.

Vegeta was potentially a threat, but only in a group fight. He would not survive a one on one battle. His power level was impressive, but he could not get past the third level of Super Saiyan without his tail. The Saiyan Prince would be the first to die, not because he was necessarily the largest threat, but because he was the author of the alrean xenocide. The clone would bait Vegeta into a one on one fight and kill him before the others could interfere.

And then there was the newcomer. The master was correct; he did look very much like Akira. He seemed older, but not terribly so. Unfortunately, that meant nothing as far as saiyans were concerned; they remained in their prime for many years, seemingly aging much slower than most other species. This new fighter could be ten years older than Akira or twenty, he could be Akira's brother or his father; there was simply no way to know. Not that that mattered, but he was an unknown variable in the upcoming battle, so he could be trouble. After all, he had defeated Clone 02 just yesterday and might be even stronger today. When the large battle broke out, and it would eventually, he would have to be the second to die, right after Vegeta.

ooo

"Hmm, more of you than I thought, but still less than you need," the clone said as he stepped out of his hiding spot in the shadows of a large boulder.

The Z Fighters quickly turned and faced their enemy who stood before them and leaned casually against the boulder he'd been hiding behind. He was dressed in simple clothes, the kind that Akira frequently wore, but on his back a red handled sword rested in its sheath.

"I suppose if you must think that my tired brother will save you once again," the clone continued.

"He's only here to watch," Vegeta replied evenly, "unless you have some more freaks hiding in the shadows there."

"No, for the moment I am the last," a small look of what could almost have been sadness crossed the replica saiyan's face, but it was quickly covered up by a smug smile, "of course, I'm also the strongest. You, little prince, don't stand a chance against a warrior of my power."

"He might not, but I do," Kanata said with a smirk as he stepped forward.

Vegeta glared at him in annoyance and was about to say something when the clone spoke up.

"I don't know who you are, but I wish to fight Prince Vegeta first. He is the coward who slaughtered the arlean people; he should be the first to die."

"Sorry pal," Kanata said as he dropped into a relaxed fighting stance, "but I don't care about the arlean people or the orders your master is no doubt giving you, I have my own revenge to get to and I'm sick of waiting."

"Step aside boy," Vegeta ordered as he moved in front of the saiyan from the future, "I will face this abomination." Kanata glared at him, but stepped back and stood next to Akira without complaint, his instincts of automatically submitting to Vegeta's authority momentarily kicking in even after ten years of inactivity.

"What do you think your doing?" Trunks yelled at his father, no such instincts controlling his actions, "There's no reason to face him alone dad!"

"He has challenged my honor, that is reason enough," Vegeta answered with a sneer.

"But…"

"Enough! I will face him alone," the Saiyan Prince said. His eyes locked onto his enemy and he added, "Don't think that I don't know what you're doing, clone. You hope that you can face us one at a time so you don't get overwhelmed by shear numbers, but they will interrupt the fight if you seem to gain the upper hand," a small sigh escaped Vegeta's lips, "no matter what I say, they _always_ do."

"Then I shall have to kill you quickly my prince."

The two warriors watched each other for a moment and then simultaneously charged towards each other, their dark hair becoming blonde as they both triggered their transformation. In less than a second they had crossed the distance that separated them, Vegeta drew back his fist and let it fly at his enemy's face. The clone shifted his weight and tilted his head to the left and the saiyan's punch sailed wide right.

With a smile Clone 01 drove his knee at Vegeta's stomach, but the Saiyan Prince brought his other hand down and blocked the attack, using its momentum to flip himself over the clone's head. The instant his feet hit the ground, Vegeta spun and kicked at the young man's unprotected back.

Again the clone was able to anticipate the move, twisting to the side and grabbing Vegeta's foot at the last second. With a flick of his wrist, the clone sent Vegeta soaring into the air.

"All too easy," the clone said with a smile as he fired a thin ki beam at the saiyan. The beam struck Vegeta in the chest and continued into the sky as Vegeta's after-image faded away.

"Garlic Gun!" the older saiyan yelled as he reappeared a short distance behind his opponent. The purple ki blast flew from his outstretched hand and raced towards the clone.

The blast was perfectly on target, but only managed to hit an already fading after-image.

Vegeta stood perfectly still for a moment, his head cocked to the side as he listened for any sort of clue as to the whereabouts of his opponent. Suddenly he spun and swung his fist at an unseen object behind him.

There was a loud crack that echoed off the walls of the surrounding cliffs as the clone's fist connected with Vegeta's jaw at the same time that Vegeta's fist slammed into the clone's eye. The two were knocked away from each other, but both landed on their feet and instantly dropped into their fighting stances.

"Hmm, this won't be quite as boring as I thought," the clone said with a smile as he touched the tender spot on his eyebrow, "You're still going to die, but at least you'll make it interesting."

"I'm glad to hear that you'll be entertained, but I hope you won't be disappointed when I destroy you," the Saiyan Prince replied, spitting some blood out of his mouth.

The clone chuckled at Vegeta's comments and then asked, "Well, are you warmed up yet or shall we play around a little more?"

"I'm ready whenever you are."

The two shot forward and collided like twin golden comets before rocketing into the air, becoming a blur of motion as they chased each other through the sky.

ooo

"This is pointless," Kanata grumbled as he scanned the area for hidden threats.

"Vegeta can handle himself for now," Akira replied with a scowl. "If I need to step in, I will."

"If this is the last clone the Arlean has left, none of you need to be here at all," the saiyan from the future countered. His eyes shifted from the surrounding area to Pan who was standing next to her father and Tien and doing her best to follow the battle in the skies overhead. At least he wouldn't need to worry about her safety after the clone had been killed.

"What exactly do you think you're looking at?" Akira asked in a quiet, but threatening voice.

Kanata smiled, "Just admiring the view..."

"Stay away from her," the younger saiyan warned, "she doesn't need a scum bag like you hanging all over her."

"I think I'll let _her_ make that decision," Kanata replied with an even broader smile.

ooo

Vegeta's arms and legs were lashing out so quick they could barely even be seen, but still the clone dodged or blocked every attack and managed to throw in a few counter attacks as well. The fight through the air had been going on for several minutes, but still no one had established any sort of advantage. Both appeared to be fighting in top form, though neither had bothered going any higher than the initial Super Saiyan transformation.

Vegeta was well aware of the fact that this clone should also be able to reach Super Saiyan Four, just as the other two apparently had, but from what he could tell, the clone was not a very experienced fighter. He relied solely on his strength and speed and thus far, Vegeta's technique had made up for any deficiencies he had in those areas.

A punch grazed the side of his head when he was a little slow moving out of the way. It didn't hurt him, but it created just enough of a distraction for a second punch to get through his defenses and slam into his chest, sending him flipping through the air.

The Saiyan Prince quickly recovered control of his body, but the moment he did, a kick from the clone smashed him into the cliff face.

Vegeta shook his head to clear the cobwebs and then spun to the side as a second kick shattered the rock where his head had been a second before. With the clone's foot still imbedded in the rock, Vegeta saw his opportunity and took it, pulling both fists above his head and driving them into the clone's back. The Akira look alike skipped along the cliff face as he plummeted to the ground, but a second before he hit, he pushed off of the rock face with his arms and brought his feet down, skidding through the dirt and kicking up two small trails of dust as he slid.

The oldest living saiyan dropped to the ground and faced his younger opponent with a smile. "Maybe you should have worked on your skills rather than just worrying about how strong you were."

"The difference between our powers is enough to make up for any skill advantage you have," the clone called back as a trickle of blood dripped from his chin. He reached back and pulled his sword from its sheath, "Let me show you a skill I have worked on."

ooo

_'This is taking too long,_' Kanata thought as he watched the fight with growing disgust. The clone was obviously not going all out against Vegeta yet and even Vegeta still could be fighting harder. Didn't they understand that he had waited ten years to get his revenge? He didn't want to sit around watching other people's battles, he wanted to kill something!

For a brief second the sight of Pan staring lifelessly up at him in a darkened warehouse floated in front of his eyes. He shuttered.

_'Enough of this! I'm getting my revenge right now!'_

Slowly, so as not to draw attention to himself he took a small step back so that he wasn't right in the line of sight of his younger self and then began to gradually power up.

Regardless of what Vegeta wanted, this fight would be over in a few minutes.

ooo

Vegeta wouldn't admit it if anyone asked and his face certainly didn't show it, but he was starting to get tired. He and the clone had traded hundreds of blows over the past few minutes, fortunately most of them had not involved the sword, with the clone preferring to make Vegeta dodge his thrusts and swipes and then land vicious kicks or punches with his free hand. The Saiyan Prince had given as much as he'd taken, but as near as he could tell the clone wasn't even being fazed by the attacks.

He had already been forced to ascend and was getting close to needing to go to level three just to keep pace with the duplicate of Akira and yet the clone just kept smiling and kept coming. Vegeta managed to land a well time kick to the face of Clone 01, sending the replica saiyan tumbling to the ground, and then decided that he may as well give into the inevitable and start using his full power.

His golden ki expanded and swirled around him in a bright ball of yellow light as he let out a loud cry of exertion. His hair became thicker and lengthened to below his waist as his eyebrows faded and his brow jutted forward. When the ball of swirling ki faded back to the normal aura, Vegeta smirked down at the clone and cracked his knuckles in anticipation.

"So, we're going all out now?" the clone asked as he casually twirled his sword in his hand. "Should I do the same or do you want to live for a few more minutes?"

"I'm sick of listening to you, freak," Vegeta spat. "Fight me however you want. I won't argue you out of throwing your life away."

"Then let's finish thi—"

A tiny stream of blood trickled out of the clone's mouth. A confused expression flashed across his face as he looked at his now empty hand, it was quickly replaced by one of horror as a thin red line appeared on his neck. Along the red line the clone's skin pealed back and blood gushed forth; his head tipped back then his neck split open with a shower of blood.

Kanata seemed to pop into existence just behind him with an evil smirk on his face and the clone's sword in his hand.

The mouths of Trunks, Pan, Gohan, and Tein fell open in shock. Eighteen looked mildly surprised, but recovered quickly. Akira glared at his future self and then glanced at Pan to see what her reaction was going to be to this new development, unfortunately she seemed to stunned to do much more than stare at Kanata.

Vegeta scowled in annoyance. "I thought I told you not to interrupt! I don't need your help finishing my battles!" He powered down, but continued staring daggers at the saiyan from the future, "What is it with you people and ignoring me when I tell you to let me handle something?"

"Sorry, but we have bigger fish to fry," Kanata replied as he casually flicked a speck of blood off of his shirt and then slammed the sword into the stomach of the clone's body with a sickening crunch.

For a moment no one said anything and then Vegeta visibly forced himself to relax and said, "What's done is done, we may as well go and exterminate a bug. Besides, Akira looks like he's going to fall asleep on his feet; we better finish this quick so he can go home and take a nap."

Akira shot an angry look at Vegeta (who completely ignored him), but didn't say anything. The truth was he _did _want to go home and take a nap, but he sure as hell wasn't going to admit that to anyone.

The eight warriors took to the air and headed up the cliff to where they could see the small opening in the rock face. A moment later they were inside and making their way through the tunnels, searching for the alien who had tried to have them killed and in one timeline actually succeeded.

o

o

A/N: Okay, two things. First, sorry this is coming out so late on Saturday night. This being Easter weekend, I was out doing family stuff all day and almost spaced that I was supposed to post today (I'd written most of it, just hadn't finished it). Second, I hope you didn't mind that the fight was a little anticlimactic, I'm just starting to run low on fight ideas (they really did used to be the easiest part of the story, but now they're just a pain) and don't want to spend too much time on minor fights, since I still have about four of them left before it's all said and done. Also, if you notice any mistakes, let me know. I didn't get a chance to proof read this as much as I usually like to. Anyway, I hope you liked it. Thanks for all the reviews!

Everyone: It sounds like most of you started to feel bad for the Arlean during the flashback of that last chapter and then were back to hating him by the end. I was really glad to hear that since it was kind of my goal. I wanted that chapter to feel a bit like chapter 39 where we found out that Akira had become a bit of a monster during his ten years under Heata. For whatever reason, chapters with twists like that are really entertaining to write.

Courtney: I wonder why there are so few of us G/CC fans...I guess she can come off a little, um, overbearing at times, especially with her obsession over Gohan's studying early on in DBZ. Honestly though, Bulma (and even Videl) can be just as bad, just not about studying (Bulma forces people to carry/follow her into dangerous situations when she'd be better off staying out of the way). Well, whatever, I guess it's just one of those unsolvable mysteries.

Anouk: Yeah, his justification isn't very logical, but I don't think many psycopaths are too worried about logic...kind of like Kanata's justification for what he did to get the fuel for the time machine. The more this story comes out and developes in my head, the more similar those two get. Perhaps at some point they'll have to sit down and discuss their similarities.

Francis Keenan: Thanks for the info. I actually will probably make use of that Arlean king/dictator's name since he plays sort of a large role in the Arlean's past. I haven't decided yet about telling the Arlean who Kanata actually is, but I suppose I'll have to decide one way or another in this next chapter.


	55. Searching the Cave

**Chapter 55: ****Searching the Cave**

o

"How are they doing?" Bra asked as she gently put her hand on the shoulder of the mohawked warrior in front of her. The young man gave a small squawk and jumped at the sudden noise. He spun around to see who had snuck up behind him while his mind was elsewhere, but slipped on the edge of the Lookout and started to fall backwards, comically waving his arms as he tried to regain his balance. Bra's hand shot forward and grabbed him by the shirt, saving him from falling and being forced to remember that he could fly.

Uubu took a second to calm his racing heart, though whether it was racing because of the surprise, the near fall, or because of who was standing in front of him was difficult to say. "Uh, thanks..."

"Anytime," she giggled.

The two stood in uncomfortable silence until Uubu realized how close he was standing to the daughter of Vegeta and took a slightly nervous step back, being careful not to further embarrass himself by slipping on the edge a second time. "Um, you're dad fought someone…but uh, you probably could feel that, huh?" he finally managed to get out, she nodded patiently and he continued. "I guess it was probably one of those clones that Kanata told us about because I couldn't sense anyone, but, uh, he won and now they're all moving again."

Bra awarded his efforts with a brilliant smile. "Of course he won, dad always wins!"

"Y, yeah...of course," the Mystical One agreed with a bashful smile.

There was another brief moment of awkward silence and then in a sweet voice Bra said, "Well, thanks Uubu."

"Oh yeah, uh, anytime."

She gave him another smile and headed back towards the Palace where the rest of the non fighters were being entertained by the antics of Kumo.

Uubu watched her for a moment and then went back to trying to focus on his friends.

"Pretty smooth," a voice next to him said with a chuckle.

"Oh shut up!" the younger man growled as he glared at Goten who was doing his best not to burst into hysterical laughter. At least Dende and Yamcha were being polite enough to keep their comments to themselves, which was something of a miracle in the case of Yamcha.

"Actually, I don't think you need to worry," Goten continued, obviously not bothering to shut up. "After all, she did come to you even though Dende, Yamcha, and I are right here."

Uubu's eye flickered back towards the Palace as he took a deep breath. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said with a sigh as he sat down on the edge of the Lookout and closed his eyes to follow the progress of his friends.

"I'll bet," Goten replied with a knowing smile as he also turned his attention towards the distant mountain.

Dende casually leaned against his staff and did his best not to chuckle. Humans were such funny people.

ooo

The tunnels leading through the mountain were far more extensive than the Z Fighters had realized at first. It seemed like every few minutes they reached a fork in the road and were forced to argue over which way they thought they should go. Initially, the general consensus was that they needed to just keep moving farther and farther into the mountain, but the twisting and turning of the tunnels soon left them baffled as to which route would actually lead them deeper into the mountain.

Vegeta and Eighteen were of the opinion that the entire mountain should simply be reduced to rubble, saving them the annoyance of having to wander aimlessly and ending the Arlean threat in one quick attack.

Pan and Gohan wanted to actually see the Arlean, hoping that a more peaceful solution could be reached. After all, the Arlean's planet _had_ been destroyed by Vegeta, he wasn't just some petty, power hungry villain; perhaps if he could see the change in Vegeta he might turn his life around and become one of the "good guys" the way other members of the Z Fighters had in the past.

Kanata also claimed that he wanted to see the Arlean face to face, though he never claimd he wanted to talk out their differences. Personally, he just wanted to make sure that he had the pleasure of watching the life flicker out in the Arlean's eyes while copious amounts of blood flowed from the alien's body...preferably through holes that the saiyan from the future had made. If Kanata had been impatient watching Vegeta's battle with the clone, he was ready to burst at any moment now. Somewhere, he knew, deep in this wretched mountain was the thing that he had dreamed of killing for ten long years. His revenge was so close he could almost taste it.

Trunks quietly agreed with Pan and Gohan, but he kept that opinion mostly to himself. He had learned long ago that only his mother could really argue with his dad and escape unharmed. Sure, you might win the argument, but Vegeta could hold a grudge for a surprisingly long time and sooner or later he would get you alone in the gravity room for "training" and then you'd regret ever opening up your mouth.

Akira and Tien also made it a point to stay out of the debates. The young saiyan was too tired to argue and just wanted the whole mess to be over with in the most anti-Kanata way possible, at the moment that probably meant saving the Arlean and converting him to a friend. If it turned out that Kanata had decided that making fiends was what he wanted to do, Akira would put some serious consideration into changing his mind and killing the Arlean. Tien simply didn't care one way or another. As long as the conflict was resolved and his friends were safe, he'd be satisfied.

The group made their way through the dark tunnels, lit only by faint auras being given off by Vegeta, Gohan, and Tien and the occasional light they came across, until they came to yet another fork in their path, this one branching off in three different directions.

"This is getting ridiculous," Eighteen said with a roll of her eyes. "Can't any of you sense him up ahead or something?"

"He's either suppressing his power or he's not very strong," Akira replied. "I can feel a lot of life in the mountain, but nothing that stands out the way a fighter would."

"He's no fighter," Vegeta grumbled, "only a weakling and a coward would send out mindless drones to attack people." He looked at the three paths and scowled in annoyance, "I still say we should just destroy this place and be done with it."

"We'll split up," Kanata said, cutting off the argument that was about to break out. "The clone said that he was the last, so it should be safe enough for us to break down into smaller groups."

"You're basing this plan on what the clone said?" Akira asked incredulously. "Well hey, there's a great idea, let's trust the psycho who wanted to murder us all and was being controlled by an even bigger psycho!"

"He didn't have any reason to lie to us, he thought he was going to win," the saiyan from the future pointed out. "Besides, we'll never find the Arlean at this rate."

The other Z Fighters, with the exception of Akira, nodded in agreement, some more reluctantly than others.

"Okay," Kanata said, "Pan and I will take this tunnel, the rest of you split up and take the other two."

"Like hell you will," Akira growled. "I'll go with you. That way there will be someone there to make sure you don't start lopping off any more heads the first chance you get." Pan huffed at the indirect insult of her abilities.

"You and I both know Instant Transmission, so we can get our groups out of trouble if we need to and come help anyone that powers up," Kanata sounded like he was explaining something very elementary to a four year old. "It doesn't make sense for us to go together. Besides, I want to make sure Pan stays safe and when I was you, I wasn't able to do that, so you'll excuse me if I don't put much faith in your abilities."

Akira's hands clenched into fists as they were prone to do whenever Kanata opened his mouth. "She's not going anyw—"

"Oh stop it, both of you!" Pan shouted in annoyance at their bickering. "I'll go with my dad and Tien." She grabbed the two older men by the arms and dragged them through one of the tunnels before anyone had a chance argue, calling out over her shoulder as she marched off, "You two do whatever you want."

Akira and Kanata stared after her for a moment and then turned to each other and simultaneously said, "See what you did now?"

Vegeta and Eighteen rolled their eyes while Trunks looked a little dumbfounded.

"If you two are quite finished," Vegeta said with a sigh, "Would it be okay if we got back to hunting down a murderer?" The two Akiras glared at each other for a moment longer and then nodded their heads slowly in agreement. "Good, Kanata and I will take this tunnel; you three take the middle one."

Kanata gave Akira one last dirty look and Akira, in a moment of incredible maturity, pulled down on the skin below his eye and stuck out his tongue and then the two marched into their respective tunnels.

Vegeta began muttering under his breath and followed after Kanata while Trunks and Eighteen were forced to hurry to catch up with their friend.

ooo

The Arlean smiled frowned as he keyed the commands into the slave controller in front of him. It wouldn't stop any of the saiyans from searching the mountain, but it might distract them and maybe lead them away from his lair. The mountain was a big place and he was fairly certain that it would take them a while to make their way through it, especially if they got turned around or led into an off shoot tunnel by his former comrades.

He wished that it hadn't come down to this, he'd wanted to help his fellow slaves, but the situation dictated a different course of action than he would have chosen. After all, if he didn't survive the new arlean race would never rise and the saiyans would continue to multiply until they could once again threaten other planets.

Yes, his survival was paramount to his plans. It was unfortunate that he would have to sacrifice those who had suffered with him, but they had been under the influence of the slave probe for so long that there hadn't been much chance of their survival anyway. If he could have helped them, he would have, but now they would have to function as his smoke screen while he tried to think of a solution to the saiyan menace that had invaded his home.

ooo

"So, you want to tell me what's going on with you and Akira?" Gohan asked as he, Pan, and Tien made their way through their tunnel, occasionally stopping to inspect branches in the road that mostly seemed to be side rooms as opposed to additional tunnels.

"Not really," Pan replied in a cold voice.

Tien let himself fall back a few steps so that the father and daughter could have some privacy if they were going to talk about boyfriend issues.

Gohan used his fatherly selective hearing and pressed the issue a little more, "You two never really used to fight until this whole mess started, are you sure you're doing okay?"

"I'm fine dad, Akira and I are fine," the second part was definitely a lie and she knew it, the first part wasn't exactly the truth either, but it wasn't _her_ fault they weren't fine. If Akira would just stop acting like an ass every time the name Kanata came up and maybe open up to her a little again, she could explain to him that he didn't have anything to really be jealous of.

"_He_ doesn't seem fine," the scholarly saiyan mumbled plenty loud to be overheard.

Pan was quiet for a moment and then said, "He just doesn't like Kanata...I don't really know why."

"Well, I'd say that part is pretty obvious," Gohan almost chuckled, "I don't think even Vegeta could push Akira's buttons the way Kanata can."

"Akira just doesn't understand what Kanata did for us. I mean, the guy went through hell so he could save us…or at least brink the future us's back to life. I just wish Akira would show a little more appreciation," the young woman grumbled.

"Kanata acts a lot different than Akira does, maybe Akira just doesn't like the change that he would have gone through." The older saiyan decided not to mention what Vegeta had said about Akira's future self being a killer, those weren't the kind of accusations that should be thrown around without proof.

"But..."

Gohan interrupted, "I don't think that's really the reason Akira and you are acting so cold towards each other, though. Did something happen?"

"_Nothing_ happened!" Pan practically yelled as her frustration got the better of her, "Why does everyone keep asking that?

Gohan opened his mouth to say something, but before he got the chance a fist shot out of the darkness and cracked loudly against his cheek.

ooo

"So," Trunks began after clearing his throat nervously as Akira and Eighteen marched along stoically, "looks like you don't much like what the future had in store, huh?"

Akira ignored him and continued walking, wishing that the lavender haired boy would just be quiet like Eighteen.

"I guess life with out Pan isn't something you would have handled very well..."

Akira ground his teeth, but didn't rise to the bait.

Trunks was getting annoyed with being ignored, so he decided to get straight to the point. "You know, if you're not careful, you could still end up without h—"

In one smooth motion, the younger saiyan spun and slammed Trunks against the cave wall. "Just shut up," he growled.

"Hey, I'm just trying to give a little brotherly advice," the pinned man said with a grin, intentionally overlooking the rage that was boiling behind the dark eyes of his adoptive brother.

Akira clearly was not looking for advice of any sort, but before he could explain that to Trunks, he was grabbed by the arm and pushed up against the other wall of the tunnel by their beautiful female companion.

"Would you two cut it out?" she hissed, keeping one hand on Akira and the other on Trunks to insure that the two would remain seperated. "You might have missed it, but there are more important things going on than Akira's love life."

Trunks' eyes never left Akira's as they stared at each other through the darkness. "She loves you, you know," he whispered earning him a glare from Eighteen which he pointedly ignored, "but if you don't start showing her that you care she's going to find someone who will at least give her the time of day. Even if it's someone you aren't particularly fond of."

"Maybe she's already decided to go that route," Akira shot back, assuming that Trunks knew about Pan and Kanata. "It didn't exactly take her long to drop me and go after him, but then she always did kind of like older guys, didn't she?" Pan and Trunks were just close friends now, but Akira knew that she had once had feelings for him, even if they weren't returned. It had never really bothered him or even been something he'd thought about until now.

Only the fact that Eighteen was standing between them and that if they came to blows they could potentially bring the mountain down around them kept the two saiyan warriors from throwing any punches as they continued to glare at each other.

"Are you done yet?" Eighteen asked after a long, tense moment.

"No," Trunks replied glancing at her briefly, "I've got one more thing to say." He turned back to Akira and said, "Did you know that she called Goten while you were busy hiding from her last week? She was so worried that she had to get her uncle to call me and see where you were because she didn't want to invade your privacy, but wanted to make sure that you were okay. You were going through something rough, but instead of going to her for help, you ran away and hid. You didn't even have the decency to call her and make up an excuse so she wouldn't worry about your sudden disappearance." The lavender haired saiyan shrugged off Eighteen's hand and started down the tunnel. After a few steps he stopped and called back over his shoulder, "If she dumps you and finds someone else, it would serve you right. A coward like you doesn't deserve her."

Akira stared after him as Eighteen, confident that the children had stopped bickering, let go of him and also continued on her way through the darkened tunnel. The young man took a deep breath that seemed to blow out a lot of his pent up emotions and followed them, lost in thought about his actions and his treatment of the woman who had betrayed him, or so he'd thought until a minute ago. Not that he doubted that he'd seen her kissing Kanata, but it was possible that the betrayal wasn't really hers.

ooo

Vegeta and Kanata walked quietly through the natural halls of the mountain, neither particularly desiring to talk to the other, but knowing that sooner or later it would have to happen. Ultimately the Saiyan Prince decided on sooner.

"So, when did it happen?"

"What do you mean?" Kanata asked, perplexed.

"When did you become a killer?"

"We're warriors Vegeta, killing is what we do," the saiyan from the future pointed out.

"Maybe, but Akira hasn't ever killed anyone in cold blood…and he's definitely never taken an innocent's life," Vegeta countered.

Kanata was silent for a moment and then asked, "How long have you known?"

"From the moment I first saw you. Decent people don't have empty eyes like you do...or like I did for that matter."

They walked for a minute or two more before Kanata said, "Once all of you were gone, I changed…but I don't think I really killed anyone who didn't deserve it until about a year and a half after I'd left Earth. Like I told everyone, it took a long time before I found anything that could power the time machine, but the person who could supply it for me was only willing to give me the fuel in exchange for me doing a little bit of...dirty work for him."

"And that didn't bother you?"

"I'd changed," Kanata said again with a scowl. "I learned that 'good' and 'evil,' 'right' and 'wrong' are just words we use to describe behavior that we like or dislike. The Arlean thinks we're evil and he's good, but from our perspective it's just the opposite. Whose to say which one of us is correct? It's not like there's some higher power up there calling the shots and even if there is…" his voice trailed off as he was reminded of Cypress and her belief in Jouten. Ever since he'd last seen her on Llum, he'd occasionally wondered if her Jouten could be real; however, the moment those thoughts and the feelings that inevitably came with them surfaced, he latched on to the anger and bitterness that had sustained him all these years and pushed the treacherous thoughts away, just as he did now. "The only thing that matters is that everything and everyone I ever loved was stolen from me..."

"So you repaid the favor by stealing everything and everyone from other people?" Vegeta shot back.

Kanata had nothing to say to that. It wasn't that he hadn't thought about it at times during his nearly ten years of working under Heata, but revenge was all he cared about. The price was worth it in the end, he assured himself. He hadn't been lying when he told Goku that he would sacrifice the entire galaxy just for the chance to bring Pan back and kill the Arlean.

Besides, he'd actually ensured that more people survived those purges than would have if he hadn't been there. So, in a twisted sort of way, he'd been saving lives.

"What did this supplier of your have you do?" Vegeta asked, breaking the silence.

"Planet purging," The words came out almost flippantly, as though the phrase was more of a joke or just an interesting little tidbit of information instead of two words that meant that he'd killed millions of innocent people just to make a buck.

Vegeta stopped in his tracks. "Purging?" he asked.

"I was the captain of a crew for most of the time, but I had to work my way up to it."

Vegeta was quiet for a long time as the two made their way along the tunnel. He hadn't thought Akira capable of something like that, especially given his weird connection to Kakarot. Of course the capacity for evil existed in everyone, but Akira had never really shown much inclination in that direction. Sure he sometimes let his emotions get the better of him, but in the end he had always been a kind, fairly polite young man...sickeningly so when he did things for Bulma without (gasp!) being asked, inevitably resulting in her asking why her own husband never did anything 'nice' like that.

"Why did you do it?" the older saiyan finally asked.

"I told you, I needed the fuel," Kanata replied his eyes glued to the tunnel before them.

"The Akira I know wouldn't have sold out his principles for some fuel."

"In my timeline," Kanata whispered almost sadly as he touched a thin scar on his face, "the Akira you know died a very painful death and the person who was left gained a new perspective on the way things work in the universe."

Vegeta let the conversation die at that. A few minutes later they reached a fork in the path. Without discussing it, the two saiyans took separate paths and continued searching for their quarry alone.

ooo

The hand that slammed into Gohan's face made a loud cracking noise and was retracted quickly as its owner let out a small cry of pain from the shadows. Gohan, whose head had shifted slightly to the side under the force of the blow but was otherwise unharmed, turned and reached into the darkness to capture his attacker. A little alien came out holding a broken hand against his chest and kicking at the saiyan with his feet as Gohan held him off the ground by his tattered shirt.

Gohan's attacker looked sort of like a small monkey without a tail. He had short, blonde fur covering most of his visible body except for his face; a long, ugly looking scar ran from the right side of his forehead straight through an empty socket that had once held an eye and then continued all the way to his neck. The alien's face had a sunken look to it that usually came with malnutrition and the rest of his body was extremely skinny though it was hard to say if it that was abnormal for his species.

"Hey, what did you do that for?" Gohan demanded.

The strange little creature looked up at him with one disconcertingly vacant eye and swung with his uninjured hand almost mechanically. The saiyan swatted the attack away with the greatest of ease and a look of confusion on his face.

"Stop," he commanded, "you're only going to get yourself hurt if you keep attacking me."

His attacker did not reply, but continued swinging, his eye seemingly staring straight through Gohan. The saiyan dropped the alien as he dodged out of the way of the kicks and punches that the weak creature continued to throw at him.

Pan and Tien, who had momentarily frozen in surprise at the sudden attack, eventually came to his aid, only to find that when they did, they became the next targets.

"Cut it out!" Pan yelled as she finally grew sick of dancing around with the alien and leapt into the air, levitating above him. Apparently he was unable to fly as he stared up at her for a moment with a blank expression.

It was as she stared down at him that Pan came to a sudden realization. There was nothing in the creature's face. Not surprise, not annoyance or anger or anything, his face was just...blank. The lights were on, but no one was home.

"Dad," she said quietly as Gohan snuck up behind their attacker, "he doesn't know what he's doing..."

Her father nodded, having reached a similar conclusion, and with a quick chop, the "fight" was over and their attacker lay at their feet in an unconscious heap.

"What do we do with him?" Tien asked as he knelt beside the felled alien. His rags had partially fallen off of one of his shoulders, revealing numerous scars that pointed to a life filled with abuse. The triclops pulled the rags further back and blanched at the sight. The alien's back was completely mutilated. Scars so deep they almost looked like canyons covered every square inch of the poor creature's back, the fur that covered the rest of his body had been torn away under the assault of whatever device had been used to beat him.

"Who would do something like this?" Pan asked as she peered over Tien's shoulder. "It's barbaric."

Gohan reached down and cupped the creature's head, running his fingers behind the ears where Kanata had said the slaving devices buried themselves. There was a slight bump on the left side.

"I'd say the Arlean didn't limit himself with trying to enslave Akira and the clones," he whispered as he lifted the little alien and gently slung him over his shoulder. "Come on," he said as he started walking again, "we'll see if we can help him when we find his master."

ooo

As Kanata rounded a corner shortly after separating from Vegeta, he nearly ran right into a large, grey skinned alien who was obviously female. The moment he came into view, the alien threw a large rock at his head. The saiyan from the future leapt smoothly out of the way without hesitation and dropped into a fighting stance as he sized her up.

It was hard to tell in the dark, but the saiyan thought she looked like she had probably once been fairly strong; however, under the constant abuse she had taken over the course of her life that strength was long gone. Most of the alien's body was covered in rags, though the parts that were visible were heavily scarred, the tell tale signs of life as a hard labor slave. Kanata couldn't be sure if the rags were to protect her modesty or to hide the plethora of healed over wounds he assumed were covering the rest of her body.

"My fight isn't with you," he told her sternly, "leave now and I won't kill you."

She neither changed her blank expression nor spoke as she reached down, grabbed another rock, and threw it at him; once again Kanata easily evaded the attack.

"This is your last chance," he growled. "Leave."

Her hand once again went mechanically down for a stone, but before it got half way there her arm was severed at the elbow and Kanata was standing behind her. The alien glanced down at her bleeding elbow dispassionately for a moment and then reached for the rock with the other hand.

Kanata was back in front of her in an instant, his fingers curling around her throat before she could reach her weapon as he effortlessly lifted her off the ground. He was about to explain to her the stupidity of her actions when he caught sight of her hallow, emotionless face as she weakly kicked at him with her feet in a mechanical motion.

"Oh," he said with a sudden burst of understanding, "it's like that, is it?" His hand flexed momentarily and there was a loud crack as the slave's neck was snapped like a twig. Kanata dropped the corpse and continued walking without giving her a second thought.

ooo

The alien was small with long, green hair covering parts of a nearly-naked, red skinned body; the only clothing he had on was a small piece of dirty, brown cloth tied around his waist and leaving little to the imagination. He was the third person to attack Vegeta in the last five minutes and the Saiyan Prince was getting a little sick of it, especially since none of the attackers were even remotely powerful enough to make it interesting.

The first two had come at him simultaneously and he'd killed them before he even realized what weak opponents they were. After that he'd taken to knocking them out and leaving them behind. The obviously poorly fed and half-crazed aliens, weren't even worth the effort it would take to kill them.

"It's bad enough that you attack me, but couldn't you at least have put some clothes on first?" Vegeta asked as he swatted away the creature's initial attack.

The alien, like all the others, had nothing to say, but just kept on attacking.

"This is pathetic," the saiyan spat, "Is this really all the best that your master has to throw against me?" He slipped past a poorly executed kick and flicked a finger against the little alien's the head, sending him crashing into the wall of the tunnel and knocking him unconscious.

Vegeta sighed in annoyance at the pile of green hair covering his unconscious attacker and then continued on his way through the natural hallway, hoping that the Arlean wasn't too much farther.

ooo

Akira, Trunk, and Eighteen had been forced to split up also and were now wandering through the tunnels and dodging the occasional attack by the weak fighters the Arlean had sent after them. The attacks were little more than a distraction and they seemed to be tapering off anyway.

As Akira made his way along his chosen path, he thought about what Trunks had said and wondered if he had somehow pushed Pan into the arms of his future self. It didn't seem possible; after all, it hadn't even been a full day since Kanata arrived. Of course, he had nearly killed her a few nights ago and hadn't really been kind in the way he'd cut off all contact with her, even if it was for her own good, but why couldn't she understand that he'd done it to protect her? It wasn't like he enjoyed not seeing her, but it was better to know that she was far away and alive than have her dead at his feet with her blood covering his hands.

He continued to mull it over in his head, slowly convincing himself once again that he was in the right, though the facts didn't lean so completely in his favor this time around. Regardless, he knew he would have to talk to her about it, about everything, as soon as this was all over.

Yes, that was the answer. He would explain why he hid and what was in his dreams, just like she'd asked. For whatever reason she always wanted to know how he felt about things, maybe if he threw in some of the emotions he'd been feeling lately she'd be appeased. Then he could explain why it was so important to him that he not be too close to her and she would see how wrong she'd been about him and would understand that Kanata was nothing but a manipulative bastard. Akira could practically hear her voice telling him how sorry she was for the whole misunderstanding as his tired brain projected his small day dream around him.

In his dream like state, he didn't even see the large metal door until he had nearly walked right past it. Only a sudden scrapping noise and the sound of quiet conversation brought him back to reality.

He cautiously opened the door and peered inside. A second later he threw the door open, bending it badly as it slammed into the cave wall with a loud crash, and stared in shock at the sight before him.

ooo

Kanata had killed three more aliens that had attacked him as he traveled along his tunnel. They barely slowed him down at all anymore, the moment they made themselves known, they were dead. Usually he was on the move again before the body even hit the ground. Something inside him insisted that he must be getting close, it wouldn't be long now.

A few minutes after killing his last attacker, his tunnel reached a T-junction. He stopped and looked back and forth down the new tunnel, wondering which way he should go. As he debated, he heard a loud crash coming from just up ahead.

Without a second thought he hurried in the direction of the noise, he couldn't sense who was there, but that made it all the more likely that he had finally caught up with the Arlean. At last he would be able to start his revenge.

At last he could start to make up for his mistake.

He ran full speed down the tunnel and then around a corner and came to a sudden, disappointed halt. The person in front of him was not the Arlean or anyone else Kanata could kill. It was Akira, staring into a room with a look of confused disbelief on his face.

"What did you find?" Kanata asked as he stepped closer to the doorway his younger self was standing in. Akira didn't reply, but he did take a small step to the side and let the older saiyan look into the room.

Inside there were several insect-like aliens huddled in the farthest possible corner from the door, blindly groping at the walls in search of a more secure place to hide and wearing little or no clothes. The room itself was barely more than a dingy cell; there were some tattered blankets on the floor, a single large plate with a few bits of food that the blind prisoners had missed during their feeding times, and at the far end of the room was a hole that reeked of bodily waste. Some of the insects appeared to have eaten very little recently (probably a self inflicted starvation) as they were exceptionally skinny, though others were quite round.

Kanata closed his eyes and sensed the life forces in the room. It only took a second for him to find what he was looking for.

"What are they?" Akira whispered as he continued staring at the blind insects who cowered at the sound of his voice.

"Hachians," Kanata replied with a look of disgust.

"You've met them before?"

"In a manner of speaking," the disgusted expression vanished and a small smile played across his face as the memory of his "meeting" with the insect race played out inside his head.

"Well, we have to help them. Can you speak their language?" Akira started to move towards the prisoners, but was stopped when Kanata's hand latched onto his arm.

"We don't have time for this," the older saiyan hissed, "There's only one thing to do with them anyway." He raised his free hand as it began to glow with red ki.

"What are you doing?" Akira yelled as he pulled himself free and pushed Kanata's hand down. "You can't just kill them, they're captives! If you know about their species and where their planet is we can return them to their home. It would probably only take the two of us one trip to Instant Transmission them there."

"They aren't just prisoners, you idiot! Hachians sell their females as slaves. They only produce one male to every five females, so they just get rid of the extras. Focus on their life forces, you'll see what the Arlean's been using them for."

Akira reflexively did as he was told and discovered that there were indeed extra tiny lives inside many of the prisoners. "They're...pregnant," he said quietly as he digested the information.

"Exactly," Kanata sneered, "mothers for that bastard's offspring."

"It's not their fault though, they were slaves. They didn't have a choice."

"Maybe not," the future version of Akira agreed, "but that doesn't change what they are or what's inside of them." His hand rose as it began to glow again, but before he could fire the blast Akira stepped in between him and the Hachian females.

"I won't let you do this!" the younger man shouted. "Even if they are carrying baby arleans, those babies didn't do anything to you, their innocent."

"Wake up boy," Kanata sneered, "what do you think will happen when they grow up? Do you honestly believe that they'll always be innocent? They'll be just like their father and more 'innocent' people will suffer…unless we kill them now."

"If you kill them, they won't have a chance to be evil, but they also won't have a chance to be good. How are you any different then the Arlean if you take innocent lives just because of the sins of their father?"

For a moment it almost looked like Kanata might attack his younger self, but then the glowing ki in his hand quietly dissipated and he lowered his hand. "If we don't kill them, what are you going to do with them? If you find a way to get them back to their home world they'll just be killed there...or worse yet, sold again."

Akira thought about it for a second and then asked, "If there are so many females in their species, why do they put up with being sold? Why not just rebel?"

"The females are all small, weak, and blind, just like these. The only thing they're good for is making babies. The males, on the other hand, wer...uh, _are_ powerful warriors. Some of them are probably close to being as strong Trunks and Goten before they transform...a few might even be able to go toe to toe with a Super Saiyan." Kanata seemed to stare off into space for a moment, "If they had had the ability to become more powerful with training, or at least the knowledge that they needed to do so..." his voice trailed off as he became lost in memory again.

Akira noticed the strange expression on his older self's face and guess at its meaning. "You've fought some of them?"

"No," Kanata replied with a contented sigh and a small, evil grin, "I slaughtered every last one of them. Their planet was a graveyard by the time I left." He gave one last look at the insectoids and then turned his back to them, "Just before I fought the clone in my time, I swore that I would kill anyone who had anything to do with Pan's death and then I'd find his friends and his family and kill them too..."

Akira's mouth fell open at the words coming out of his future self's mouth.

"...however, I have more important things to do than fight you over whether or not we should kill these pathetic bugs. If you're dumb enough to think that the bastard's genes should be passed on to a new generation then so be it, but you'd be doing the universe a big favor if you killed every last maggot in that room." He walked away without another word and disappeared into the darkness of the caves.

o

o

A/N: Hachians came from somewhere, but for the life of me I can't remember. I think it's probably just some non English word that means something that would have described them, but I wrote that scene a while ago and now I have no clue what the word meant or where it came from. So if anyone recognizes it from some other literary/cinematic/etc. work, then the name is the property of whoever came up with it. I just needed a scene with Kanata basically confirming Akira's beliefs about his future self, especially in a situation where Pan isn't around.

A/N: This would have been out earlier (like yesterday) but fanfiction . net was having some issues…well, at least it wasn't my fault. I went back and added to/fixed the end of the last chapter. It's not a huge change and certainly doesn't change anything that happens here, I just realized after reading the first couple reviews that Vegeta was a bit out of character and should have at least complained about Kanata's interference. Anyway, I really thought I was going to get to the Arlean in this chapter, but at nearly 5,500 words I decided to put it off until the next chapter. There was just too much stuff happening in here. I hope you liked it, please review and let me know what you think.

Toni the Mink and Courtney: It was after reading your reviews that I started thinking that I needed to go back and fix the end of the last chapter a little. My only excuse for missing something as obvious as a ticked off Vegeta is that I was in a hurry to make my Saturday deadline and didn't really read over that last part after I wrote it. Thanks of pointing it out for me.

Francis Keenan: Hehe, you kind of read my mind on the insectoid women scene!

donkeykong27: I agree we do need at least _one_ good Akira when it's all said and done (maybe we'll get two if Kanata sees the error in his ways...eh, maybe not), hopefully when this story is finished springing from my subconscious and onto my computer screen there will actually be a good guy or two left!

Queen Arsinoe: Yay a new reviewer! At least I think you are...I don't remember seeing one from you before, well, whatever, thanks for the review. I'm glad you liked the fight, there will be quite a few from here on out I suspect (at least three more that I can think of).

Draco the Destroyer: I think the next chapter or two should answer your question (though the little bit of his back-story has the answer also).


	56. The Arlean is Found!

**Chapter 56: The Arlean is Found!**

o

"I have more important things to do than fight you over whether or not we should kill these pathetic bugs. If you're dumb enough to think that the bastard's genes should be passed on to a new generation then so be it, but you'd be doing the universe a big favor if you killed every last maggot in that room."

Akira watched as Kanata disappeared into the dim tunnel as he continued down the path. The man was even worse than he'd thought. Suggesting that they should kill these poor women just because they were carrying the Arleans children? Was it possible that the loss of Pan had driven him that far over the edge?

The young man quickly shook the unpleasant thoughts from his mind, he would worry about it later. Maybe he would even try to get the full story of what happened in the other timeline from Kanata...assuming he could resist the urge to tear the man limb from limb for a few minutes.

Akira looked back at the blind insectiods and sighed, he'd have to come back for them. There wasn't much he could do at the moment anyway; perhaps Gohan or Dende could help him figure out what to do with them once the whole mess with the Arlean was straightened out.

The saiyan did his best to get the door closed, if the blind creatures were to get out and start roaming the caves, he'd probably never be able to find them again. When he'd pulled it open he'd done some damage to the hinges and now it only partially closed; still, it was better than nothing and it didn't really look like the female aliens were trying to escape anyway.

With the door as closed as he could get it without breaking it more, Akira hurried in the direction Kanata had gone.

ooo

"Anything new?" Piccolo asked as he hovered in the lotus position. He had been trying to meditate, but the constant noise from Bubbles and Gregory along with his own agitation over the events taking place on Earth made it extremely difficult.

"As a matter of fact, something pretty significant was just uncovered," King Kai replied without opening his eyes or moving from the spot where he always stood when he monitored the living world. "According to Dende, Uubu and Bra might be interested in each other. I'm guessing Vegeta will be very pleased when he finds out..."

"That's not what I was asking about!"

"Fine, fine, I just thought you'd be like to know that Uubu might be joining us in the near future."

Piccolo glared at the kai who put his hands over his mouth, trying to hold in his giggling.

After a moment King Kai managed to calm himself and said, "No, nothing has really happened since Vegeta fought the last clone. He and the others are searching the mountain for the Arlean as we speak."

"Can you sense the Arlean?"

"He doesn't seem to have a very high power level, so it's hard to focus in on him, but I'd say that Vegeta is the closest to reaching him. Of course Kanata, Akira, and Eighteen could be ahead of him and I wouldn't know it; however, someone will probably find him in another ten minutes or so."

The powerful namek digested this information as he closed his eyes and tried to return to his meditation. From the sounds of things his friends were all going to live, that was good news. Still, a part of him, an admittedly selfish part, almost wished that they had joined him in Other World. Not that he wanted them to die, but some company other than a monkey, a talking fire fly, and a bad joke telling kai would have been nice.

He opened one eyes, looked at King Kai for a moment, and then with a small grin said, "So, Uubu and Bra, huh?"

King Kai fell over.

ooo

Uubu sneezed, bringing his focus out of the cave and back to the Lookout.

"Are you okay?" Yamcha asked, glancing at the young man.

"I don't know, maybe I'm coming down with a cold or something..."

Dende smiled, "I've never really tried healing someone who was just sick, but I can try if you want."

Uubu waited for a minute to see if another sneeze was coming, but when none came, he shrugged and said, "Must have just been some dust or something."

ooo

The room was dark, lit only by the feint blue-green glow of the five cloning cylinders quietly humming away as they grew what was supposed to be a new wave of protectors for the soon-to-emerge New Arleans. The new clones were growing rapidly, only two weeks in and they were almost as physically mature as a ten year old child, in another week and a half they would have been ready and then the next batch could have been started.

The Arlean reached out and touched the tube that held what he had thought would be his ultimate revenge, to turn the race that had nearly wiped his out into his slaves and the protectors of his children. These wouldn't have been as strong as the first three that had survived the process, after loosing the majority of his earlier attempts he'd learned that the strength that was woven into the saiyan Akira's genes was more than the majority of clones could handle when they first emerged from the cloning tubes. He'd had to genetically alter them slightly to limit their initial power levels; however, if all of these survived, they (along with their more powerful older siblings) would have been easily strong enough to take out the saiyans and their friends. If he'd been able to remain patient just a little longer, if he'd waited for one more month before beginning his assault on the saiyans, things could have been so different. But he hadn't, and these clones could not possibly be ready in time to stop the enemy that was bearing down upon him.

The enemy that had come to finish what their prince had started all those years ago.

"Oh Lord Atla, what would you have done?" the Arlean whispered. "You always had a gift for seeing the best solution to any dilemma."

Of course that wasn't exactly true. Atla was a gifted leader, but he hadn't seen the betrayal that was lurking within heart of his most trusted general. He hadn't seen the danger until it was too late.

The last of the arleans sighed at the memory of that day, the day the soldiers came. The day General Moai and those loyal to him had overthrown the peaceful government, using that monster, that genetic abomination, to ensure their victory.

In a way, that was the day Maester Dasala of the Arlean High Council, Senior Advisor to Prince (soon to be King) Atla had died. He certainly was never the same after that. A few years later he had lost his wife, his brother, many of his friends, had no idea what had become of his children, and was living as a slave on the god forsaken planet the slave masters called TrEs-3.

But even though the person that he was had died, a new one had risen. The new Dasala, became simply known as "the Arlean." He killed a guard with his bare hands, something the old Dasala would have never dreamed of doing, and then led a revolt against the slave masters. A revolt that left most of the slaves dead from the self destruction of the control probes that were implanted in their brains, but the survivors had slaughtered every last one of their former masters and had escaped from the planet. Dasala and many of his fellow slaves had journeyed back to Arlea, planning on restoring the good and rightful government and bringing a new era of peace to the beautiful planet. Unfortunately all that greeted them was an asteroid field, the sad remains of his home world.

His friends from TrEs-3 had disbanded after that, heading to their own homes or to new homes to make a life for themselves with their new found freedom, but Dasala had stayed, keeping the slaves who could no longer function without the slave device with him. Those poor souls who had been under the probe's control for so long that they no longer existed as real people, but were simply governed by the commands of controller, had been his only companions during the long years of searching the galaxy for an explanation of his planets destruction.

Initially he had thought it was some sort of cosmic accident, a large comet striking the planet perhaps, but much later he learned the truth. The saiyans, the race of warrior monkeys who cared for nothing but the blood lust that oozed from their black hearts, had come and killed his people. Why they had stopped at Arlea was unknown, but their scouters had reported back the Frieza's central command center what they had done. With the downfall of the tyrant, the information was for sale at an almost reasonable price...Dasala had gotten it for free off the dead body of the dealer.

The search had taken many, many years. Sometimes he even stopped looking for a while and spent some time learning from the different alien species he came in contact with, only to resume his search a few months later when he had gotten everything he wanted from them. Finally he found where the saiyans had ended up; however, when he did he was shocked to discover that they were living peacefully on the planet Earth. There was no attempt to punish them for their crimes, nor had they conquered the planet; in fact, they were breeding with the humans, building up a race of demi-saiyans that could potentially threaten other species, or worse, threaten the New Arleans that he hoped to father someday.

The injustice was more than he could take, that these murderers could think that their crimes would go unpunished was maddening, and so the Arlean had devised his brilliant plan. He had found the strongest saiyan, the boy known as Akira, and had managed to not only implant an enslaving device in his head, but had obtained a sample of his blood with which to clone him. Initially the Arlean had hoped to have the saiyans wiped out by one of their own, but when it turned out that Akira was too strong willed to be controlled to that extent, the clones were given the task.

It was a perfect plan, an Akira replica, totally loyal to the Arlean, could visit any of the saiyans or their allies and kill them before they even knew what was happening...but it did not work. Somehow the saiyans learned of the plan and destroyed the clones.

And now they were here. Now they would finish the xenocide they had started all those years ago.

The Arlean's blue eyes focused once again on the tube in front of him where a saiyan child floated with his tale wrapped tightly around him. The universe was a sick and evil place if vermin like these were destined to win out over those they had wronged…

Suddenly a new idea occurred to him that brought a small smile to his face. It was a long shot, but perhaps his destiny wasn't written quite yet.

He reached for a button on a computer screen and pressed it.

ooo

_'This is it,'_ Kanata thought to himself as he pulled open the metal door that blocked the tunnel, inside was a large, dimly lit cavern. The saiyan from the future stepped inside and looked around, his muscles tense and ready to spring into action the moment he detected an attack. The area appeared to be abandoned, but there was a computer system, lights, and what looked like some sort of throne at the far end.

This had to be the Arlean's lair.

About half way down the cavern, there was a second metal door with a feint green glow coming from the crack along the floor. Kanata headed for it, an evil grin slowly forming on his face.

_'I've got you now,' _he thought as he threw open the doors.

ooo

Pan, Tien, and Gohan had been forced to separate just like the other two groups of Z Fighters had. Gohan hadn't been particularly excited about the idea, but he had eventually given in to the his daughter's argument that it was the quickest way to find the Arlean and that all signs pointed towards there being nothing outside of the occasional weak slave patrolling the caves and tunnels.

So now Pan was alone with her thoughts as she walked down the dark passageway. Thanks to her father, her thoughts were dominated not by the search for the Arlean, but by her dilemma with Akira and Kanata.

After the attack of the first slave, Gohan had given her a few minutes of silence before once again questioning her on the matter. She had informed him that it wasn't any of his business, but he just said that as long as she was his daughter her happiness was most definitely his business.

Pan was pretty sure that was just something parents said to justify being snoops.

Whatever the justification, Gohan had pressed the issue until finally she'd given in and told him that she felt like she and Akira had been drifting apart and that she wished he would look at her and talk to her the way Kanata did.

Gohan had been quiet for a while and then asked something that she knew but still didn't like to hear since it was devastating to her case against Akira: "Do you think he avoided you because it was what he wanted or because he was trying to protect you?"

She hated to admit it, but when faced with that question, Akira was the good guy and she was the one acting like a jerk. It wasn't fair to blame him for not wanting to be around her when he had some mini robot trying to talk him into killing everyone...she just wished he would have come to her for help instead of going to Vegeta or hiding out by himself.

She was his girlfriend damn it! He was supposed to confide in her.

Then there was the whole Kanata thing, which just clouded the issue even more. She was in love with the older version of Akira, she couldn't even try to deny it, but the reasons that she loved him were confusing and complicated.

She let out a weary sigh and smacked the wall in frustration, leaving a good size hole in the side of the cave and brining down a small shower of rocks and dirt upon her head.

Even the stupid cave was against her apparently.

ooo

Kanata let out a small sigh of contentedness as he stepped into the room and faced the large insectiod. "So we meet at last."

The Arlean didn't really look the way Kanata had thought he would, not that he was completely sure what he'd expected to begin with. The alien stood head and shoulders above him, with large, blue eyes that matched his body coloring and almost seemed to glow in the light coming from the empty cloning cylinders in the center of the room. There were numerous scars on his skin and several cracks on the hard-looking shell that covered parts of his body. The shell itself seemed more like a suit of armor than true exoskeleton, an evolutionary hold over from the species' days of crawling through the muck as cockroaches no doubt. One of the Arlean's antennae had been broken off at some point during his life and there were some curious metal wires sticking out from various places all over his body.

"You are the new one," the Arlean said and then bitterly added, "the one who ruined everything for me."

"Yeah well, pay backs are a bitch, aren't they?" It was hard to read the insectoid's face, but Kanata thought the alien looked confused by the last statement.

"So tell me," the confusion disappeared and the Arlean actually began casually strolling around the room, "how did you know about my plans?"

The saiyan smirked, "Is this your last request?"

"Just a matter of idle curiosity," the insect-like alien reached the doorway and started to step through.

"Stop right there!" Kanata yelled as he raised a glowing hand which bathed the room in its pulsating red light. "You're not walking out of here alive, not after what you did."

The Arlean glanced over his shoulder and said, "I am not a warrior and you defeated one of my clones, I seriously doubt that I could get very far if I tried to run. I simply wish to die in a more comfortable setting. However, before I die I would like to know who you are and how you kne—"

A thin ki beam shot from one of the saiyans fingers and sliced through the Arlean's shoulder, knocking him through the door and sending him crashing to the floor. It was not a killing move, but it caused an extreme amount of pain.

"I don't have to tell you anything!" Kanata hissed as he followed the insectoid into the larger room. "You deserve nothing but the most painful of deaths for what you did!" He kicked the felled alien, sending him tumbling across the floor.

"And w...what did I do?" the Arlean wheezed while blood trickled between his fingers as he pressed a hand against the hole in his shoulder.

"You killed everyone and everything I've ever cared about."

"I...did?"

"Well," Kanata smiled, "not this time around."

The Arlean was quiet as he slowly got to his feet. "No matter what crime you think I've committed against you, it cannot compare to what your race did to mine," he pulled a controller from his belt and pressed a series of buttons turning on the lights in the large cave.

With the visibility significantly increased, the Arlean seemed to be examining Kanata closely. "The resemblance to my clones is remarkable," he said weakly. "You are not Akira's parent. Are you his brother or..." his voice trailed off for a moment and then he said, "You're not a brother either, are you. Y, you _are_ Akira...how is this possible?"

"Sorry, but that's not my name anymore, if it was, you might have a chance at living through this. When you killed my friends I became someone different," the saiyans face fell into a scowl as his eye lit up with rage. "I suppose you could say that in a way, I'm as much a creation of yours as any of your clones...your little plan killed all of my friends, even the woman I love, but it also allowed me to be reborn as something I never would have been were it not for you…here, let me show you the monster you created!"

Blue bolts of electricity crackled around him as his barrier fell away and his golden aura exploded into existence, the entire mountain began to tremble under the force of the energy that was rolling off of him in waves.

ooo

Pan spun around at the sudden explosion of power.

"That's Akira!" she yelled to no one in particular. Instantly she was running back along the tunnel that had apparently been taking her away from wherever it was that the Arlean was hiding. She only hoped that Akira wasn't in any sort of danger. If there was another clone or worse, multiple clones, he would be in serious trouble and if anything happened to him before she was able to set things right between them...

She put on an extra burst of speed.

ooo

The only Z Fighter who could not pinpoint the exact location and source of the power was Eighteen who had not been equipped with ki sensors by Dr. Gero. Fortunately, all of her other senses where highly tuned and while she couldn't sense power levels, she could feel the vibrations of the mountain and the general direction they were coming from.

And so throughout the tunnel filled mountain, the Z Fighters were quickly making their way towards the Arlean's lair.

ooo

Kumo was busy showing off for the gala of non fighters, mostly just the wives of the Z Fighters, though Chiaozu was pacing nervously through the air as he waited for news on Tien and Master Roshi was sitting in a chair and paying more attention than was natural to a magazine called _"Short Skirted Women of Golf."_ Those who weren't named Roshi or Chiaozu were oohing and awing at all the right times while the little boy showed them his impressive array of tricks such as counting to ten, singing the ABCs song with most of the letters in the right order, doing somersaults and jumping from the floor up onto Mr Popo's head and then hopping off again before his mother could grab and scold him.

Valese had apologized to the dark skinned assistant of the kamis several times for that last stunt, but Popo simply laughed it off and told her that he didn't mind.

The little boy had cheered at this, though it was hard to say if he was happy that he had permission to continue his antics or if he just liked the way Mr. Popo talked. The next time he tried it, he added some extra difficulty by standing on just one foot while on the genie-looking man's turban covered head. A few minutes later, when Popo got out a watering can, Kumo became distracted from his duties as entertainer and decided that he wanted to help with the chores.

"So Bra, how are things going with Uubu?" Chi-chi asked casually as Mr. Popo and Kumo began doing a little dance while watering some plants.

Bra chocked on the tea she was drinking and started blushing furiously while her mother's eyes widened slightly. All eyes, except for those of Mr. Popo and Kumo, were now on the daughter of Vegeta.

"I..._cough_...don't know what you mean, Chi-_cough_-chi."

Chi-chi glanced at Bulma and winked, "It just seems like the two of you get along pretty well…I thought maybe there was something there, after all you two are the only one's who haven't settled down, except for Yamcha, but I think he's hopeless."

"Uubu is just a _friend_," the young woman said in a loud, firm voice that would have silenced anyone who hadn't seen the world face certain destruction at least a couple of times; however the only person in the room who fit that description was Kumo and he wasn't listening anyway, so the uncomfortable conversation continued.

"We know that, honey," Bulma chimed in as she caught the mischievous glint in Chi-chi's eyes, "but let's face it, you two are about the same age and he's a very nice guy and he's..." her voice trailed off as she raised an eyebrow, "...single."

Bra opened her mouth to tell her nosey mother that anything going on between her and Uubu, not that there was anything, was no one else's business, but before she could, Kumo started crying loudly.

The women all turned to see what was the matter when suddenly Bra felt it also It was almost impossible not to feel it. Someone was giving off such an enormous amount of power that anyone with ki sensitivity had no choice but to notice it.

"Something's happening," she whispered as she got up to go see if Uubu could tell her what was going on.

ooo

_"Pan?" he asked, kneeling next to her and gently touching her bruised face. Her eyes remained closed in unconsciousness, he could feel her quickly slipping away. "Oh Kami! Pan, wake up honey...please, you have to hang on."_

"Now," the small memory played over the top of reality as Kanata's aqua blue eyes locked onto the terrified alien who was slowly backing away from him, "you are going to die a very slow and very painful death at the hands of a Saiyan of Old...the saiyan that you created when you killed my friends!"

_He thought about picking her up, but one look at the large hole in her stomach told him that moving her would do as much harm as good. If he tried to move her she would die, if he left her where she was she would die; there was nothing that he could do._

He slowly pulled his arm back as his fingers seemed to curl into claws, ready to tear into the flesh of his hated enemy, the enemy who had tricked him into doubting his own innocence, the enemy who made Pan hate him, the enemy who had stolen his life from him. His moment of revenge had finally come and the fear on the face of the Arlean only made the blood lust course through his veins that much faster.

_He took her hand in his and squeezed it, "Please Pan. Please don't leave me," he whispered lowering his head to hers as her blood coated him in a piercing reminder of his failure to protect her._

_Even as the words left his lips, he felt her life force fade away._

With a roar of rage, Kanata's hand shot forward as a cruel smile formed on his lips.

o

o

A/N: The word "maester" came from Final Fantasy X (which I am finally playing), it's some sort of religious leader in the game, but I thought it sounded like a good title for a high level administrator too. The planet TrEs-3 came from a real planet known as TrEs-1 (a planet a bit less massive than Jupiter located some 500 light years away)...see, I was really creative and changed the '1' to a '3'...okay, I guess that wasn't really all that creative. Anyway, that's where those things came from.

A/N: Muhahahahahah, how's that for a cliffhanger? Unfortunately the next chapter probably won't be out until next Saturday, I was going to wait until this Saturday to post this one, but I've been done with it for a few days now and I've already done some work on the next chapter and honestly I've just been itching to post this since I finished proof reading it. So there you have it. I have an essay (worth 20 percent of my final grade no less) due on Thursday, which is why I probably won't update until next Saturday; if I happen to get bored of doing important things like writing my essay or deciding what to write my essay about (I'm a bit of a procrastinator, can you tell?) then I might be able to update on Wednesday, but no promises. Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter, review and let me know what you think.


	57. Light or Dark, Who is Stronger?

**Chapter 57: Light or Dark, Who is Stronger**

o

The Arlean's eyes widened as the saiyan from the future's muscles bulged and hair became blonde while his golden aura swirled around him. The powerful transformation that the monkey race had been blessed with was a frightening sight to behold, especially when it signaled your impending destruction. It was all happening so fast, too fast. The Alrean knew he needed more time, but time was something that was no longer something he had any control over.

"Now," the saiyan's aqua blue eyes locked onto the Arlean as he slowly backed away, "you are going to die a very slow and very painful death at the hands of a Saiyan of Old...the saiyan that you created when you killed my friends!"

The insectoid raged inside, even as he body trembled with fear. This wasn't how it was supposed to be! The saiyan was supposed to let him talk, give him a few minutes so his plan could be completely put into action, but something had enraged the saiyan and now it seemed that all hope was lost. The Arlean knew his race would never be reborn, the saiyans would find and kill the pregnant females he had purchased, the slaves he had sent out to distract his enemies were no doubt already dead as well; everything he had worked so hard for was falling apart.

The saiyan pulled back his fist as his blue-green eyes clouded over in anger and the Arlean knew that his end had come, the fates had conspired against him one last time to ensure that his people would remain dead for all of time.

As the fist flew forward, all the Arlean could do was close his eyes and wait for the sweet release of death. At least now he would finally be allowed to see his beautiful wife...

ooo

"It'll be over in a few seconds," King Kai said with his head bowed.

"Vegeta got there already?" Piccolo asked in surprise. King Kai had said it would take Vegeta a few minutes to reach the Arlean and usually the kai was extremely accurate in his predictions about these sorts of things. Apparently the Saiyan Prince had been in more of a hurry than King Kai realized.

"No, Kanata found him first...I doubt there will be much left by the time the others get there."

Piccolo looked at the kai in confusion, he seemed almost sad that the person who wanted to kill off the saiyans was about to meet his end.

As though reading the namek's mind—and he actually might have—King Kai added, "If anyone else had gotten there, perhaps the Arlean race could have been saved."

ooo

Kanata smiled as his fist shot forward, streaking towards what should be a non-vital area. After what this vile creature had done...had intended to do, a swift death would be too kind an ending for Pan's murderer. No, the Arlean was going to be shown a level of pain that would defy imagination before he was sent to burn in hell with the clones.

And then his fist froze in the air as a powerful hand seemed to materialize around it. Kanata looked at it in surprise and then slowly traveled to where Akira was standing next to him. The younger man had a look of vindication on his face, but also of disappointment; it was an odd mixture of emotions.

"What are you doing?" Akira asked with a strange calmness, the fatigue that had clung to him since the day before had vanished momentarily. "We're supposed to be looking for a peaceful solution to this."

"Maybe _YOU_ were, but there's only one way this can end: his death!" Kanata hissed at his younger self, "He'll pay for what he did to Pan!"

"What about what you did to the Hachians?" Akira shot back, his eyes lighting up with anger. "You said you wiped them out, do you need to pay for that?"

"I will pay for it," Kanata replied with a smirk as he wrenched his arm out of Akira's grasp, "just like I'll pay for all the others, but when I'm burning in hell I want to be able to look over and see the one who drove me there! The only way it can all be worth it is if the pleasant aroma of burning bug keeps me company for all of eternity."

The Arlean looked back and forth between the two arguing Akiras in surprise and then let a small smile form on his face. If they would just keep it up for a little while longer, all might be saved.

"There's no way you're really me," Akira shouted, "I would never kill innocent people just for...just for revenge..."

"Idiot," Kanata yelled back, "Not only would you, but technically, you already did! I am who you would be if you ever got your head out of the sand and realized what the universe is _really_ like. Pan was stolen from me! My life was stolen from me! Why should I give a FUCK about what happens to someone else?" His body snapped into a fighting stance as his power level began to rise. "The only thing that matters to me is making sure that Pan lives in this timeline and the Arlean dies...the rest of the universe can go to hell for all I care, I'd be glad to have the company."

Akira remained standing just as he had been, not wanting to power up or do anything else that might provoke his future self. The man had just confirmed in the young man's eyes that somewhere along the line he would have gone insane with grief over the loss of Pan; not that Akira really needed to be told he'd be lost without her, but he didn't realize he'd be willing to take it out on the rest of the universe.

"Don't do this," he asked quietly, "I don't want to fight you, but I won't let you take this any farther."

Kanata actually started chuckling, "Well boy, that's just too damn bad! I've waited ten years for this moment and I won't let you take it away from me." The enraged saiyan pointed an accusing finger at the Arlean who was trying to melt into the shadows, "He took my family, he killed my friends, he killed the nameks so no one could be wished back, he made it so everyone would blame me, and he killed Pan! He made her think I did it, he made her hate me..." A small tear trickled down his face, slowing only as made its way over a thin scar on his cheek. "Death is too good for him," Kanata whispered, "but it'll have to do!"

A ki beam leapt from his finger and raced towards the Arlean, who held up his arms in a futile attempt to protect himself.

ooo

"What's happening Dende?" Bulma demanded as she hurried to the edge of the Lookout where Goten, Yamcha, Uubu, and the kami were standing.

"Akira's powered up..." Dende murmured, his eyes closed and his body leaning heavily on his staff as he put all of his energy into focusing on the events far below. "No, wait...no, it's not Akira," a look of intense concentration appeared on his face for a moment and then eased as he opened his eyes and stood up straight, "Kanata has found the Arlean."

"Is the Arlean strong?" Bra asked, "I can't feel him at all."

"I don't believe so," the young kami replied calmly.

"Then what's all the hoopla about?" Chi-Chi asked in agitation, she really hated the life-or-death struggles her family and friends seemed to constantly find themselves in. Deep down, though she refused to admit it and would probably pound even the strongest Super Saiyan into the dirt for suggesting it, she really was a worry wart. Anytime a battle or conflict like this arose, her mind always latched on to the most awful outcome possible, regardless of how improbably, and her body was wracked with fear for the safety of her loved ones. "If that thing isn't very strong why is Aki...er, Kanata using so much power?"

Dende frowned, "Everyone that was important to him was destroyed by the Arlean from his timeline..." His voice trailed off, but the implications of what he was saying were clear.

"But Akira would never do something like that, would he?" Bra whispered, not believing that the young man who was practically her brother could ever become the kind of person who would do what Dende was implying.

Uubu shook his head sadly and said, "He's not Akira...not anymore at least. Vegeta told us last night that Kanata is a ki—"

The heads of five warriors, one perverted turtle hermit, one god, and one toddler all turned in the direction of the mountain as a second large power level exploded into existence right next to the first one. For a moment no one said anything as those who could sense ki tired to understand what they were feeling and those who couldn't waited patiently for some sort of explanation.

Well, patiently might not be the right word.

"So?" Bulma and Chi-Chi demanded simultaneously after about five seconds of waiting.

"That one was Akira," Dende explained, "and he's with Kanata."

Goten nodded his head and glanced at his wife who was holding Kumo with an anxious look on her face. The youngest son of Goku tried to give her a reassuring smile, but his eyes locked on those of his son and realization struck him.

"Hey, he didn't cry this time!"

"Huh?" Bra asked, giving voice to the thoughts of everyone present.

"Kumo, he cried yesterday when Kanata powered up and again today, but not this time..."

Dende let out a low whistle of appreciation, "Your kid's got talent, Goten."

"What do you mean?" Valese asked even as she smiled at the compliment of her amazing little boy.

Dende smiled back, "The only difference between Akira's life force and Kanata's life force at the moment is their emotional tint. Kanata is full of hate, but Akira isn't...the two of them feel identical on the surface, but if you can go a little deeper they're as different as night and day."

"So what are you saying? Kumo can tell the difference already?" Yamcha asked in disbelief, "He's only three, he couldn't possibly be doing that!"

"It's just a guess," Dende replied with a shrug as he turned his attention back to the world below, "but then again, he _is_ Goku's grandson."

Before the god could be questioned farther, the events on Earth once more demanded the attention of those who could sense it, be they three years old or fifty.

ooo

Before the attack could find its mark Akira was standing in front of the insectiod, his golden aura flaring around him as he held out a hand and deflected the beam into the ceiling.

"Fine," the young warrior growled, "I've wanted to do this since the day I met you anyway." His aura shimmered as it swirled around him chasing the shadows from the large room. "If you won't stop," he promised, "I'll stop you! I guess it's time to see which of us is the better Akira."

Kanata smirked and cracked his knuckles, readying himself for the battle that he'd been longing for as well. He glanced at the Arlean who was standing behind Akira with an almost happy look on his face at the prospect of seeing two of his enemies going at each other's throat, "Don't look too excited there, cockroach, as soon as I'm done kicking this little boy's ass, I'm going to take my sweet time tearing you apart. After I finish with you, I'm going to finish off your little harem and make sure none of your kind ever see the light of another day."

Without another word, the two Akiras shot towards each other, hiding their power levels as they charged. Their collision in the center of the large room sounded like a sonic boom as the battle that had been approaching from the moment they met finally got under way.

ooo

Pan rushed along the natural hallways towards the two immense power levels that Akira and she hoped Kanata were giving off. She'd been tempted to just forget following the tunnels and blast her way straight through, but had decided that bringing a mountain down on top of her, her father and friends, and the poor slaves that had been forced to attack them would not be a good idea.

And so she ran. Sometimes she was frustrated by a sudden dead end or the tunnel twisting away from where she wanted to go, but she never stopped moving, never stopped searching for her way to Akira.

And then the two energy sources that she'd been heading towards were gone, leaving her in the dark as though someone had flipped the light switch.

She prayed that Akira was with Kanata and that they had just needed to hide their power for some unknown reason. It didn't feel the way she imagined it would when someone died, there was no slow decline in power or anything like that and it certainly didn't feel the way it had when Akira had been killed at the Tenkaichi Budoukia, but still she feared what the sudden disappearances of the twin life forces could mean.

Rational or not, she was afraid for him…for both of them. She knew that Akira wasn't at full strength and he would only use the kind of power she'd initially felt if he was preparing to fight someone powerful...someone he might not be capable of beating in his weakened state.

Oh how she prayed that Kanata was the second power level, she knew the two Akiras didn't get along, but at least she would know they were both safe if they were together. As long as neither of them were fighting the clones that had wiped out all but one member of her race in the alternate timeline, then everything would be okay…unless, of course, they'd found something even worse than an Akira clone to fight.

The dark haired young woman did her best to remember roughly where it was that she had felt the power radiating from and continued searching for a way to get there.

ooo

The two versions of Akira seemed to be dancing as they fought within the cave. Each one knew the other's moves perfectly and could anticipate every punch or kick that came his way. However, one of them held the advantage when it came to power and ruthlessness and so every few seconds Kanata landed another blow when Akira wasn't quick enough to dodge the attack he knew was coming. But even though he was being hit, the younger man always managed to recover before Kanata could follow up on his success and the cycle would begin anew as over and over they went through the motions.

Kick.

Dodge.

Punch.

Block.

There was a never ending rhythm to the fight, a flow that both unknowingly followed despite the fact that it seemed to handicap them and draw things out. After a minute or two that seemed to last forever, the two combatants jumped apart and stared each other down, both wondering why they were unable to land any sort of meaningful blow.

Kanata was the first to realize his mistake and he couldn't help but chuckle at his own stupidity. "Of course, why didn't I think of it earlier?" he asked himself with a shake of his head.

"What are you talking about?" Akira demanded, still running the brief fight through his head and trying to see why Kanata was always a step ahead of him.

"I'm fighting exactly like I did when I was you," the older man replied. "Your body already knew what was coming every time I attacked and I could anticipate your moves for the same reason."

"Then this fight is pointless, neither of us can win."

"No," Kanata grinned wickedly, "this fight is about to end. Unlike you, I don't always fight like this..."

ooo

"Can you feel what's happening daddy?" Marron whispered to her father, not wanting to disturb his concentration, but also not wanting to be left in the dark.

"Not really," the former monk replied with a frown. Akira or Kanata or both of them pulled their vanishing act so there isn't much to feel other than Vegeta and the others closing in on where Kanata was.

"Is mom okay?" this was the real question she'd been trying to ask. Eighteen might be one of the strongest warriors on Earth, but she rarely fought anymore and knowing that in another timeline she had been killed by the forces she was hunting for now only made her daughter that much more uneasy.

"Sorry," Krillin shook his head, "She doesn't use ki power the way the rest of us do, I can't sense her."

Marron bit her lip and nodded glumly. She had assumed that, of course, but it never hurt to check anyway. The young woman wished that the fighting could stop, that her family and her friends' families could just live their lives in peace…mostly she just wished that her mom was here with her and not off fighting something potentially powerful enough to kill all of the strongest fighters on the planet.

ooo

Akira charged forward and swung at Kanata's face only to find that his aim was off by about a foot and a half. Somehow Kanata had moved with such speed that even though Akira hadn't blinked, he had completely missed the movement. He turned and sent a kick whistling through the air at the older saiyan who wasn't even looking at him. Again his aim was off.

_'How can he be this fast?'_ Akira wondered as his eyes went wide with a mixture of fear and anger. '_He isn't even using Kaio-Ken, but I can't see him move!'_

As near as he could tell, Kanata wasn't fighting at that much higher of a level than him, the older man's speed was just incredible.

"What's the matter little boy, feeling tired already?" Kanata taunted with a grin. He closed his eyes and sighed, "You're so pathetic it's sickening."

"H, how are you doing this?" Akira asked as he wiped a tiny stream of blood away from his eyes.

"When you spend ten years hiding how strong you are and fighting warriors of the caliber I've faced, you either improve your speed or you get your ass handed to you the way you are right now," Kanata replied, waving for his younger self to give it another try.

Akira growled and recklessly charged forward again as his anger got the better of him, he put everything he had into a punch, ready to turn his older self's face into paste. But even as his fist came forward, Kanata vanished again and a strange weight appeared on top of Akira's head. The young man looked up in shock and found Kanata standing on him, grinning triumphantly.

"Give up now, or I'll start fighting you for real. I told you that the only thing that matters to me is revenge; don't think for a second that I won't kill you if you don't get out of my way." The older saiyan calmly hopped off Akira's head and began stalking towards the Arlean who had backed into the far corner of the room. His younger version didn't move he just stood exactly where he had been with his mouth hanging open in surprise at the abilities Kanata had just displayed.

"I hope every member of your stinkin' race was sent to Paradise," Kanata whispered, "because when I finished having my fun and send you to hell, I want you to spend eternity with no one but me to keep you company so you can dwell on just how badly you fucked up!" His hand began to glow as tiny, blue bolts of electricity crackled around him, "But first things first. Let me show you what I did to one of your clones in my timeline." He held up the glowing hand and fired a thin ki beam at the insect's arm; he was going to make this one of the slowest deaths in history.

Before the beam could find its target, it was swatted away as Akira once again stepped in between the Alrean and his older self.

"I won't let you do this," the young man said quietly, knowing that he might have just sentenced himself to death. "This isn't what Pan would want you to do...your Pan or m...or the one in this timeline. Murdering the Arlean won't bring them back."

Kanata couldn't help but be impressed, Akira was stupid and was potentially throwing his life away, but he was still standing firm for his beliefs. The saiyan from the future couldn't even remember what it felt like to be that delusional. The truth was he really had no intention of killing Akira unless it was absolutely necessary, not that he really cared about his naive younger self, it was just that it would be really hard to explain the boy's death to Pan. The last thing Kanata wanted to do was ruin his shot at being with Pan (any Pan) because Akira was too dumb to know when to back down. Still, he couldn't let the boy think that he'd called his bluff; Kanata would just have to teach the young man a lesson in how things really worked.

"You know," the older saiyan replied with a surprisingly calm voice, "those nightmares you've been having aren't as bad as you think. The worse nightmares are the ones you would have gotten after everyone was dead because of you...those nightmares didn't go away when I woke up because in the end everyone I loved was dead because I was too much of a coward to protect them." His eyes locked on the Arlean who was wearing a strange expression as he watched the exchange between the two saiyans, Kanata's face hardened as his hands balled up into fists and his lips twisted into something resembling both a smile and a sneer. "I'm not just going to kill him, _little boy_, I'm going to make sure he understands the hell that I've gone through because of him! I'm going to show him what the monster that he created does best."

He glanced back at Akira and in an almost sad voice said, "You should have stayed out of my way. The others in this time might mean something to me, but you are just a bad reminder of the reason a sick little bug like that was able to destroy my life." His aura swirled faster around him as his anger fueled his power level, "Pan deserves someone better than a weakling like you!"

Pain ripped through Akira's head as Kanata's fist slammed into it and sent him crashing into the wall of the cave. The young man barely had time to groggily open his eyes before a ki blast sent him through the wall and the numerous other thick walls of solid rock between the interior and the exterior of the mountain.

The young saiyan exploded out of the mountain with a shower of rocks and tumbled end over end before finally crashing into the forest below, large burns covering a lot of his body and his clothing ripped to shreds by his trip through the walls of the caves.

A second later Kanata emerged from the newly formed cave and headed towards his fallen other self, the Alrean momentarily forgotten as he focused on showing Akira just how weak he truly was.

ooo

Gohan felt the mountain tremble and hurried as quickly as he could without causing any more damage to the two unconscious slaves he had slung over his shoulders. Somewhere near by a fight had broken out and either Akira or Kanata or both or them were in the middle of it.

If it was Akira, the young man could be in trouble as he was definitely in no shape to be out here.

If it was Kanata, then whoever he was fighting probably had only a few seconds left to live if the end of Vegeta's fight with the last clone was any indication of how the saiyan from the future operated.

Gohan wasn't sure which option was the better one.

ooo

Akira did his best to ignore the sounds of his burnt skin cracking as he shook his head and tried to focus on the world around him which at the moment seemed to be spinning at a dizzying pace. Before he had a chance to really regain his equilibrium Kanata kicked him hard in the stomach, cracking several ribs and sending him flying through the trees (at least that's what he assumed was breaking against his back) and into the shallows of a small nearby lake.

"I told you to stay out of my way," Kanata growled as he landed next to the young man who was struggling to pull air into his lungs, "but you had to play the hero, you had to side with the son of a bitch that stole my life from me. Well, you've chosen your side, enjoy the price."

His fist crashed into Akira's already broken ribs, a loud cracking sound testifying to the additional damage he did to them. The young man gasped as pain shot through his body, but he hadn't felt anything yet.

Kanata's foot shot up and slammed into Akira's face, opening up a large gash above the younger saiyan's right eye. Akira stumbled back under the force of the blow, but before he got very far, Kanata grabbed him by the arm and pulled him forward, driving his knee into the other saiyan's injured ribs and then head-butting him in the face, shattering Akira's nose for the second time in as many days.

Akira fell to his knees as blood ran down his face, stinging his eyes and pooling in his mouth. Every breath he took was agonizing. The pain was so intense he couldn't concentrate enough to ascend to the next level even though he knew he desperately needed to.

The older saiyan grabbed Akira by the throat, pulled him roughly to his feet and then tossed him high into the air. In an instant Kanata was in the air and had passed his helpless younger self, he preformed an almost casually back flip building up even more momentum and then hit Akira with vicious kick to the back that sent the weakened warrior plummeting back into the water.

Kanata was lost in the euphoria of battle now; his thoughts were not on Pan, his other friends, or even the consequences of his actions. The only thing he cared about was showing his younger self who the stronger Akira was and paying the younger man back for daring to stand between him and his long awaited revenge. If he had to kill Akira to get the point across, then so be it.

The bubbles rising to the surface of the lake where Akira had slammed into the water began to slow and then stopped altogether. Another fighter might have seen this as a sign that the young saiyan was dead, but Kanata knew better. Akira had finally woken up and was trying to figure out what he was supposed to do now; no doubt he'd be throwing a ki blast out of the water or something equally as predictable in a moment or two.

And then as if summoned by his thoughts, a ki blast shot out of the water and headed straight for Kanata, who knocked it towards the spot on the lake that he thought Akira might try to escape from...just as the young man leapt from the water, right into the path of the attack. The blast hit Akira in his already injured back and exploded, driving the saiyan down into the rocky shore of the lake.

"You're so predictable it's boring," Kanata said as he dropped to the ground next to his younger self.

"I'd rather be predictable than a monster like you!" Akira spat as he wobbly climbed to his feet. The pain from the burns and bruises on his back didn't really bother him; it was the multiple cracked ribs and the blood running down his face that he was really worried about. If he couldn't breath then he couldn't fight, and right now he was just barely able to block out the pain long enough to pull oxygen into his lungs.

He was losing this fight...badly, but that didn't matter, he would not let his future self murder someone in cold blood, even if the bastard deserved it.

The young saiyan took a deep, painful breath and dropped into his fighting stance again.

Kanata grinned, "You're even dumber than I remember. Do you think you even stand a chance against me? I'm not even close to going all out and I'm picking you apart, but since you're so eager for your beating, I'm not going to keep you waiting!"

He charged forward, ducking under a weak punch from Akira and drove his fist into the young man's chest, cracking his sternum. In all honesty, if Kanata had wanted it enough, that could have been a killing strike. It wouldn't have taken much more power to push through his younger self's rib cage and take out the heart and lungs.

Akira gasped as all the air was pushed out of his lungs and his dinner from the night before tried to escape through his mouth.

Kanata wasn't even close to done yet. With a quick spin move he was behind Akira, his elbow already racing towards the other saiyan's injured back. The blow sent Akira stumbling forward, only to walk into a powerful uppercut from the older warrior, snapping the young man's head back. Akira was lifted off his feet which put him in perfect position to be hit by the kick from above that Kanata used to drive the young man back into the ground.

Again Kanata landed and calmly waited for his younger self to get to his feet, but this time he did not bother taunting Akira.

And again, Akira began to rise, blood dripping off his face and splashing on the rocky ground, his breathing slow and labored. Every time the young man's chest rose and fell it was obvious how much pain he was in, but still he climbed unsteadily back to his feet.

The second the young saiyan warrior was up, Kanata charged at him.

Akira ducked under a kick that probably would have taken his head off and tried to sweep the older man's legs out from under him. The moment he went for the sweep, Kanata leapt over him, grabbing Akira by the head as he flipped in the air and using the momentum to pull Akira off the ground, over the older man's head and then slam him face first into the dirt. It was a move that would have driven the spinal cord of a weaker warrior into his brain, but saiyans were nothing if not resilient.

Regardless of his resiliency, the attack left Akira in incredible pain and hovering on the brink of unconsciousness.

Once again Kanata stepped back and let Akira rise. As he waited, he closed his eyes and felt for the life forces of his friends and the Arlean back in the mountain, the fight with Akira had already been going on for a few minutes, but for some reason the Alrean was still in exactly the same position. Vegeta and the others were quickly descending upon the area, but most likely wouldn't get there for a little while as the tried to make their way through the maze of tunnels.

_'Good,' _the saiyan from the future thought with a smile. If they could give him just another few minutes he'd have time to kill the Arlean and think of a reason for why Akira had been beaten to a pulp. Maybe he could just say there was one last clone and his younger self had been to sleep deprived to put up a good fight...yes, that would work, at least until Akira was able to try and tell them what really happened. Fortunately, the young man's hatred for Kanata was incredibly obvious and could be used as a defense against the "baseless" accusation.

A small groan brought the saiyan from the future out of his thoughts and back to the matter at hand, Akira was amazingly on his feet again. Kanata couldn't help but smile, the boy was weak and stupid, but at least he refused to give up. Still, the Arlean wouldn't stay still for very long and if Kanata was going to have any fun before the others arrived he needed to finish this fight right now.

Golden light swirled around him as red fur sprouted from his skin and covered most of his body, his tail seemed to appear out of nowhere and his eyes changed from aqua to yellow. Muscles that had been lean and cut, suddenly became more bulky and unnatural looking. The newly transformed warrior smiled as he realized how much easier it was to perform this transformation after the pain he'd gone through the day before, perhaps he could achieve level five if he pushed himself.

Not that it would be needed to end this fight, Akira was barely standing and probably almost finished as it was.

ooo

Vegeta was close and he knew it. It couldn't possibly be too much farther, but then again, he'd been thinking that for the last few minutes and he still hadn't found anything yet.

'_Two more minutes,'_ he thought. _'If I still haven't gotten there in two minutes I'm just going straight through the rock, screw this slinking around in the dark bull shit!'_

He probably wouldn't actually start blasting through the walls when the supposed time limit ran out, but at least it gave him some options, even if he wasn't taking them. Not that he was just going to run around inside the mountain for the rest of the day, but the moment he felt like he was getting no closer to his goal would be the moment he abandoned the less destructive approach.

ooo

Akira was struggling to keep his eyes open, but he could see Kanata charging forward in his newly transformed state, the look in the older man's eyes told Akira that his future self planned on ending the fight here and now. He wasn't sure if Kanata had been serious about being willing to kill him, but he found it pretty believable. He needed to get some distance, he needed to power up to a higher level of Super Saiyan, he needed...

And then the punches began.

Akira couldn't even form a complete thought as his older self pounded him mercilessly from every direction. The young man instinctively backed away from the onslaught, walking backwards into the lake as he tried to block the blows or escape them, but Kanata stayed right with him the whole way, never slowing his attacks.

As Akira moved deeper into the lake, the resistance against his legs caused him to lose his balance and fall into the water. Even that didn't stop Kanata who just kept swinging, but it did slow him down slightly and the cool water on his face awoke Akira from his dazed condition.

Images of Kanata killing the two clones without a care in the world, flirting with Pan, kissing Pan, flowed through the young man's mind as he ground his teeth. Kanata had been making a fool of him all this time, ever since he arrived the day before and pounded Akira into the street.

Akira could feel the blood pounding in his ears as his anger took control. He'd had enough of this, he'd been fighting to keep Kanata from hurting the Arlean, hoping that his future self would see the light and turn away from what he was doing, but that didn't seem likely anymore. Akira desperately wanted to see something good in the man that he would have been, but apparently there was no good left. Well, if Kanata was that far gone, then Akira wouldn't bother holding anything back anymore.

Pan had told him that she thought he and Kanata had a lot in common, but she had never been more wrong about anything in her life. There was no similarity between the two and Akira knew it. Kanata's lust for revenge had spiraled out of control and someone had to stop it, right here, right now, before more innocent people were caught up in the destruction.

Akira's cry of rage was muffled by the water, but the explosion of golden light that emptied the lake was an obvious enough sign that the fight wasn't nearly as over as Kanata had initially thought.

o

o

A/N: Okay, so I sat down to work on my homework today and some 6,000 words later (and no progress on my essay) here we are. Oh well, I guess there's always tomorrow to work on my real life assignments. Hopefully this chapter was satisfactory to all those who have wanted to see so violence (finally) make its way back into the story. The whole thing with Dende's comments on Kumo was really random; I don't even know why it's there to be honest. I just started writing a scene to show what was happening at the Lookout and that's what it popped out like. I can definitely say that it has nothing to do with anything that will happen in this story, but maybe it leaves me something to work with if I ever decide to do another sequel or a spin off or anything (which will not be happening anytime soon). Anyway, I hope you guys liked it, if nothing else it's a quick update, right?

Queen Arsinoe: I'm glad you like my little side scenes with Bra and Uubu (and anyone else that catches my fancy as I look for filler things to break up the monotony. They're actually the most fun part of the story to write for me, especially since I rarely know what's going to happen in them until I start writing.

Courtney: The Uubu sneezing thing actually came from both my latest Ranma 1/2 (which I've become addicted to of late) purchase which had a sneezing scene and from a recent chapter of Naruto (about four people sneezed in it). After laughing about how funny it was that everywhere I turned some manga had someone sneezing in it, I noticed that it would fit with Bra and Uubu's situation also. I actually haven't decided how (if at all) the Arlean is going to die. Up until just recently I was all for turning him into a smear on the wall, but I feel kind of bad for him now that I know more of his past...maybe I'll think of a way for him to survive.

Francis Keenan: I don't know if Akira's hatred could be anymore out in the open, but (after this chapter especially) the two do have some differences that they need to work out, don't they? Part of the reason I'm not sure if I want to kill of the Arlean is because I think it would almost clash with a semi theme of revenge vs. redemption that has developed in the story...well, I guess I'll have to figure it out when I write the next chapter.

Toni the Mink: I'm glad you liked the Uubu-Bra fluff, it's fun to write. I don't know why the last few chapters have been as long as they've been, but I suspect it has to do with me delaying my start on my essay. Fortunately I'm a pro at BSing my way through writing assignments (I get A's on papers I wrote just before class and barely proof read, don't ask me how, but somehow I can pull it off), plus I do my best work (in my mind) when the pressure is on.

TheTiny: Just one word for your review: Thanks man...eh, counting is hard when you're tired.

Anouk: I'm glad you liked it, hopefully this one was decent too.

Geoffrey Oh: No worries about not reviewing too frequently, I'll take any review I can get (I'm so addicted to them it's not even funny). I'm glad that you've liked both of my stories.

Rejhan: Yeah, Kumo's actually pretty cool for having just about the least amount of scenes of anyone in the story. Little kids are just hilarious in all that they say and do, so he can be a lot of fun to write whenever I find a spot I can include him in.

Everyone who read, but didn't review: You should be ashamed of yourselves! Okay, not really…I do that too, but if you've read this far and haven't reviewed yet, don't be shy, I love hearing what everyone thinks.


	58. Shifting Balance

**Chapter 58: Shifting Balance**

o

Kanata leapt back as a brilliant column of golden light turned the pristine lake, which had seemed to be only seconds away from becoming Akira's gravesite, into a steam filled crater. The water vapor began slowly revolving around the intense light and then slowly crept away into the forest, filling the woods with a thick fog.

The saiyan from the future watched in wonder as through the mist a golden figure could dimly be seen rising out of the crater and drifting forward. And then a feint breeze pulled the fog away as the golden furred Akira gently touched down on the ground.

Kanata had never seen a Super Saiyan Five from the outside and at the moment he wished that he never had.

The younger man's metallic-blue eyes burned with intensity as they locked onto Kanata. Akira's wounds were not completely healed, but they appeared to have stopped bleeding and breathing no longer seemed to cause him pain. For a moment the two powerful warriors stared at each other as the younger man's golden fur shimmered in the sunlight that peeked through the fog that was swirling around the two versions of Akira. Akira's face was not filled with anger despite the intense (and mostly one-sided) battle that had raged between the two warriors for the last few minutes, instead, he had a look of peace about him, perhaps even compassion as he looked upon the man he could have been.

"I won't let you kill the Arlean when there is no need for more blood shed," Akira said in calm, but firm voice, "and I won't let you kill those innocent women in the cave whose only crime was being forced to carry your enemy's children. You let your thirst for revenge consume you and rule your life; you've become everything you should have despised. You're no different than the Arlean or Ammit, you destroy innocent lives without remorse…how could you let yourself become this mockery of who we are? You've turned your back on everything we were supposed to be." A sudden insight hit the young man as an idea that had never crossed his mind spilled out from his lips, "We are Goku's legacy: his power, his life, even his soul fill us. In a way, we have an obligation to lay down our lives for those in need, just as he did."

The mentioning of the name Goku awoke Kanata from his moment of shock. "So, you're back to playing puppet again, are you?" the older saiyan sneered, "Thinking we have an obligation to our _benevolent_ _creater_ to always do as he would do? Well, you might think you owe him something, but not me. That sick bastard gave me life, gave me power, but what do I have to show for it? I got to hold Pan in my arms while her life bled out of her and later I got to see her on the Great Kai Planet and listen to her tell me she hated me. I don't owe Goku anything! You call me a mockery? Hardly. If you knew half of what I've seen you'd know how fucked up this universe is, you'd know that there's no such thing as right or wrong, justice or injustice. If those things really existed, then I would have died and Pan would have lived, the way it should have been! Why should she pay for my mistakes?"

He scowled and then said, "I didn't protect her so, in a way, her blood is on my hands and the only way I can be washed clean of my guilt is if I completely and utterly destroy the one who stole her from me."

"Yeah, that's really what she'd want to hear you say…I can't believe I would have become as pathetic as you," Akira spat. "Pan had to watch us bleed to death, Gohan saw Goku die twice, Chi-Chi's lost Goku three times and thought she lost Goten when we fought Ammit, the list goes on and on, but they didn't turn their backs on their ideals the moment things got tough. We live in a dangerous universe and sometimes people die, but that isn't any excuse to become a murderer. Do you really think that Pan would have wanted to be revived by a self absorbed hypocrite whose only concern is making sure the universe is a better place for himself regardless of who has to die to make it happen?"

Kanata's face twisted with rage, "Sure, this is all easy for you to say, you didn't see your nightmares come true or spend two months thinking you had killed your friends and you didn't watch helplessly as Pan's life drained out of her because you weren't there to protect her the way you should have been! You look down on me, but you would have done the samething, you would have become what I am just as willingly as I did because you would have known that the only way to make the universe the way it was supposed to be was to do what was necessary to fix your mistake, no matter what the consequences were or who you had to kill!" Lightening bolts crackled around him as his anger fueled his power and his ki masking barrier vanished, "You think you're so pure and righteous, but the only reason you're like that is because _I_ became what I am and defied our fate. You owe me everything!" He dropped into his fighting stance as a look of hatred lit up his face, "Now, get out of my way or I'll kill you where you stand, I don't care what level you're at!"

And with that, the two versions of Akira charged at each other once more, gold versus red, light versus dark, young versus old; neither willing to let the other walk away the victor.

ooo

Gohan's brow creased in worry as another powerful ki burst into existence for a moment and then once again vanished. It was impossible to tell exactly how many versions of Akira were running around the mountain, but it looked like the clone that met them outside had lied about being the last. He rounded a corner and collided with someone.

"Oof," Gohan grunted as he landed hard on his butt, dropping the two slaves that he had been carrying. In the darkness he could see whoever or whatever he'd just hit rubbing its head as it also sat in the dirt.

"Dang it Gohan," an annoyed female voice said, "Watch where you're going!"

"Eighteen!" the saiyan exclaimed in relief at having finally come across a companion in the maze of tunnels.

"Where's everyone else?" the blonde android asked as she stood up and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"You're the first person I've seen since Pan, Tien, and I split up."

"Great, well can you at least tell me how close we are to the fight?" Eighteen asked.

"Not too much farther, but with all the twists and turns in the tunnels I don't know how long it'll take to get there," Gohan replied as he looked back and forth in the tunnel and tried to decide which way to go now.

"It'll be quicker if we just go straight there and stop worrying about the tunnels," Eighteen pointed out.

"Let's give it another minute or two, if we still don't seem to be getting any closer we can switch to more drastic measures," Gohan replied as he lifted the two unconscious slaves and started heading back the way he came. "Come on, there was a fork in the road back here, maybe it'll take us where we want to go."

Eighteen rolled her eyes, but followed him; something about this reminded her distinctly of following her brother around while they looked for Goku. What was it with guys and wanting to do things the hard way?

ooo

Akira seemed to be not so much charging forward as teleporting closer and closer to his older self as he would appear for a moment and then vanish only to reappear that much closer, it was the first sign to Kanata that this fight was nearly lost already. He knew Akira better than anyone possibly could and he knew that his younger self didn't even need to become visible for those brief instants, Akira was making sure that Kanata knew what was coming and felt to see just how wide the gap between their power levels was. It was one of the first things Vegeta had pounded into his head when he first started training again.

_"Anyone can defeat a weaker enemy, you could probably do it without him even knowing what hit him, but he'll just keep coming back if you don't have the stomach to kill him. If you show him your complete and utter superiority, you not only win the battle, you'll put the thought into his head that he has no chance of ever catching up to you. If you crush his spirit he won't challenge you again."_

The Saiyan Prince's words echoed in Kanata's mind as Akira appeared right in front of him and then vanished once again.

"It's over," the young man whispered from behind Kanata. The older man's eyes widened as a kick smashed into his back sending him flying forward.

Akira was already ahead of him, waiting patiently as his older self flew towards him. A mighty uppercut lifted Kanata high into the air, where Akira was once again waiting, both hands above his head.

The area trembled as if an earthquake had hit when Kanata slammed into the ground after the two handed blow from his younger self. The force of the impact shattered the hard earth and left an enormous crater in the middle of the once peaceful woods.

The three consecutive attacks had left Kanata momentarily helpless as he rocketed towards the ground and the trees and rocks that had "softened" his landing had easily ripped into his skin. His pants were a blood stained mess, his face and body had been torn open in several places and he was instinctively keeping one eye shut as blood seeped out from under his eyelid, but he had taken Akira's initial assault and was still standing, or at least he would be once he pulled himself out of the hole he was in. It wasn't exactly an impressive accomplishment, but it was something.

The warrior from the future stood up and shook himself as rocks and dirt fell from his fur covered body, he wiped blood away from his good eye and turned to find Akira hovering at the edge of the crater, his arms folded and his stance almost neutral.

Kanata shifted his head to the side until it gave a small popping sound and then smiled. "Thanks, I've been trying to work that kink out of my neck for a while now."

Akira didn't respond, he just dropped to the ground and charged forward, his fists flashing at the speed of light as the saiyan from the future's head was painfully snapped back and forth under the force of the blows. Finally, Akira took a small step back and spun, whipping his foot out as he did and kicking Kanata hard in the chest.

The older man was sent plowing through the ground, uprooting trees and rocks as he went until he was able to regain enough presence of mind to push a hand into the dirt and use it as an anchor to flip himself out of the trench he was creating. He landed and once again searched for his enemy, but he needn't have bothered.

"Sei Kaze!" the young man yelled from behind Kanata. The red beam struck the warrior from the future before he even had a chance to turn around and defend himself.

ooo

Pan felt another wave of ki either from an attack or a momentary power up and was ready to say that enough was enough. She was tired of wandering around the mountain hoping that she could find her way to the Arlean through the maze of tunnels, she was ready to start punching through walls and seeing what she could find.

Since her days of running around the galaxy with her grandfather, she had worked hard at reigning in her impatience and, while some days were still better than others, she had succeeded. However at the moment she was ready give into the impatience's tantalizing promises of instant gratification, mostly because she was worried about Akira or Kanata fighting whatever it was he/they were fighting...actually she was worried about them regardless of whether or not they were fighting.

The thinly veiled contempt or outright hatred the two held for each other was more than a little disturbing. It wasn't even because of Kanata's ability to push Akira's buttons as her father had said or that Akira saw something in his older self that he didn't like, the two of them had _never_ liked each other. Despite how well he tried to hide it, it was obvious that Kanata despised Akira for some reason or other and Akira clearly felt the same way. If the two of them were ever alone with each other for more than a few minutes…well, she didn't even want to think about what they would do to each other.

She came to a dead end and let out a small huff of annoyance. This was getting her nowhere! In her frustration she took a mostly half-hearted swing at the wall and was surprised to feel it give way under the blow. Even more surprising was what was waiting her on the other side.

A well lit natural corridor with a large, slightly bent metal door was almost right in front of her.

"Well, this is a start," she said to herself as she stepped forward and gently opened the door.

ooo

Kanata should have been dead. The signature attack he had developed while fighting for money just before he met Pan was not as powerful as Vegeta's Final Flash or Gohan's Kamehameha, but this one had been fired at point blank range with no chance for even an affectation of defense and Akira's current power level was far higher than his own.

And yet he was not dead. In incredible pain, yes, but not dead.

Akira was still holding back, still fighting to win, but not to kill. He wasn't even trying to humiliate Kanata, he just wanted the battle finished with his older self still alive.

As he pulled himself out of the hole that he was lying in, Kanata promised that he would let his younger self live just long enough to regret being so stupid, but not much longer.

Akira was once again waiting for him to get up, just as Kanata had done earlier, but the younger man wasn't doing it so he could taunt Kanata, he just didn't want to use any more force than absolutely necessary to win the fight. He had no desire to kill his older self and, though he wouldn't admit it, he wasn't sure how much power he had left.

Akira closed his eyes and felt out the life-forces of his friends still in the mountain. "If we stop now, no one needs to know this even happened," he whispered.

"How kind of you," Kanata replied in a mocking voice, "but we aren't stopping until one of us is dead. There obviously isn't enough room in this universe for two Akiras." He launched himself forward, his fist raised and ready to strike, but before he had the chance Akira's powerful hand was around his wrist.

"I won't kill you," the young man said quietly, "but if you won't quite, I'll force you to." There was a loud snap of bone as Akira twisted his older self's wrist at an awkward angle and then unceremoniously tossed the older man to the ground.

Kanata, to his credit, didn't even cry out in pain. The moment his feet hit the ground, his good hand glowed a bright red as he fired a quick, but powerful ki blast at Akira.

The young man was taken by surprise and the blast struck him in the chest, sending him flying into the air as a trail of smoke marked his flight path. He hit the ground hard, but was up in an instant, anger boiling in his eyes as he fought to control his emotions, his chest was red and black where the ki blast had burned his skin, but aside from that he was unharmed.

"Fine," Akira growled, "let's end this." He charged forward and vanished.

ooo

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

Videl scowled, but did her best to block out all distractions and remember the way that Gohan had taught her to sense ki and focused her underdeveloped abilities towards her husband and daughter as they did whatever it was that they were doing down below. The number of times that she had sworn to herself that she would really buckle down and get good at this particular technique were too numerous to count, but maybe this time she'd really follow through. It was just so hard to be motivated to work on those techniques or to stay in fighting shape when everyone around you was more powerful than you could ever hope to become.

How were you supposed to keep your edge when your husband could literally destroy the planet without even thinking about it or when your daughter eclipsed you in physical strength shortly after she was potty trained?

Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap Tap tap

Her hands clenched, but she took a deep breath and tried to regain her focus. How did Gohan do this sort of thing so easily? Sometimes in the middle of a conversation with her, his eyes would momentarily unfocus and then refocus and he would carry on with whatever it was he was saying without much more than a half-second pause, it was almost impossible to see for anyone who didn't know him as well as she did. Sensing another person's ki was as easy as looking at the clock on the wall to him, easier even since he'd become slightly nearsighted during college.

_'When I was just a little younger than Pan I would have thought it was some sort of magic trick if Gohan had told me he could sense his brother all the way at home or could feel Piccolo on the other side of the planet,'_ Videl thought,_ 'Amazing how things change._'

Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap

One thing didn't seem to be changing was that damn tapping. Videl turned her smouldering blue eyes in the direction of the offending sound and waited for it to stop.

TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap TAP Tap

The old Videl, who used to routinely beat the tar out of armed gunmen, momentarily reared her head, ready to dish out some punishment, but was pushed back down by the calmer and wiser woman she had become. It wasn't such a bad noise after all, maybe a little annoying, but not even that loud. No one else seemed to be noticing it, so it obviously wasn't bothering them. She was just over reacting because Gohan and Pan might be in danger.

TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP

"STOP DOING THAT!" Videl yelled at the top of her lungs.

"Oh thank Kami"—Dende looked up, realized that he wasn't being spoken to, and turned his attention back to the mountain—"I thought I was the only one who could hear it," Bulma said with a sigh of relief as the tapping stopped.

Krilling looked up at the several women—including his own daughter—who were glaring down at him. "Er, sorry," he said quietly and stuck his hands in his pockets, "I guess it's a nervous habit."

A small, understanding smile formed on Chi-Chi's face, which was good because she was the one he feared the most. The rest of the group who couldn't sense ki gave him one last stern look and then went back to their own quiet nervous habits.

Krillin was quiet as he started focusing on the mountain where his wife was possibly facing mortal danger…fighting an enemy of unknown power and abilities…an enemy who had killed her in the other timeline already…

Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap

"Krillin!"

ooo

It had tested his patience and nearly driven him insane, but finally Vegeta had made his way through the mountain and found a large, brightly lit cavernous room that could only be one thing: the Alrean's main room.

It only took a second of scanning the room with his eyes for the Saiyan Prince to find his target. The large insectoid was pressing buttons on a metal control box as he stood near an enormous hole in the wall that did not appear to be natural.

"We meet at last Prince Vegeta," the Alrean said without looking up from the device. "I have dreamed of your death for many years, but I didn't actually think that I'd be allowed to witness it first hand."

"Yes," Vegeta replied with a smirk as he crossed his arms, "You prefer to use other people's powers to kill, using your clone slaves because you don't have the power or the guts to try coming after me yourself."

"We all use the gifts we've been given. You use your physical strength to wipe entire races out of existence and I…I use my mind." Suddenly five small, golden objects appeared, as if out of thin air, next to the Arlean. "Good bye, Vegeta, I hope you rot in hell where you belong."

The small whatever they were, charged forward their features coming into focus as the rushed at Vegeta.

"What the hell?"

ooo

Kanata knew Akira's style as well as, if not better than, the Akira himself did, the saiyan from the future could pretty accurately guess where the attacks would be coming from and even what form they would take, but what he couldn't do was keep up. Knowing what was going to happen and stopping it from happening were two different things and in a fight like this, that made all the difference.

Akira wasn't playing anymore and he didn't seem to be holding back too much either, in his Super Saiyan Five form he was so fast and so powerful that Kanata was basically helpless as the young man raced about him faster than the eye could see, landing punch after punch and kick after kick. The only time Kanata saw his assailant was when he was thrown into the air and Akira was waiting to knock him back to earth. Even as a Super Saiyan Four, he couldn't keep up with the golden furred warrior who had suddenly taken complete control of the fight.

_'This was all Heata's fault,'_ Kanata realized as he ducked under a punch that he was pretty sure was coming, only to be caught by a knee to the face that followed the missed punch, _'if that damn lizard hadn't been so scared of saiyans I could have kept my tail and I'd be wiping the floor with this little bastard.'_ If he hadn't already killed Heata, he would have been annoyed enough to do so now.

However, if a silver lining could be found when your arm was broken and your opponent was stronger and faster than you, it was this: Akira had become angry once again and was not actually fighting particularly well. He hit hard, but his attacks were unfocused, he was fast, but predictable. All Kanata had to do was put everything he had into defending himself and wait for Akira to either start showing the effects of sleep deprivation or make some really stupid mistake.

One or the other was bound to happen sooner or later.

It ended up being not so much a mistake as a moment of kindness that realigned the balance of power in the battle. Akira, after proving his complete and utter dominance over his older self stepped back and let Kanata have a moment to breath.

"This fight is over," the younger man whispered, "you can't beat me and you know it. Let's go wait for the others and we'll decide what to do with the Arlean from there."

Kanata ground his teeth and scowled as he wiped blood out of his eyes. Wait for the others? Why should he have to wait for them? They weren't the ones who had been wronged. They weren't the ones who'd seen their lives torn apart by that disgusting bug. They weren't the ones who had refused to accept the hand the universe dealt them and had spent the last ten years struggling for this moment. They didn't deserve the chance to kill the Arlean and they certainly didn't deserve the chance to let the maggot go!

Were it not for his missing tail, which he had cut off ten years ago just so he could have the chance to change things, he would have beaten the tar out of his smug younger self and shown the Arlean the true meaning of pain by now. Instead he was being humiliated by this little brat who knew nothing of true suffering, who didn't deserve the soft life he'd been given, who didn't know the first thing about the way the universe really worked.

It just wasn't fair, life wasn't fair, the universe wasn't fair, but Kanata knew that there was a way to make things right, a way to correct the mistakes of a foolish child who had run from his responsibilities, the mistakes that whoever it was who was in charge of the universe had allowed to take the lives of those he loved. Jouten, the Fates, the Kais, dumb luck, it didn't matter who had let his mistake kill Pan and leave him alive, he knew he had to fix it. He had to kill the Arlean or everything that he had done, the last ten years of his life, would be for nothing. He had to set things right no matter what the cost. He had to kill the Arlean, this one and the one in his timeline, he couldn't let that crime go unanswered, he just couldn't. If he didn't get his revenge he wouldn't be able to live with his failure, with his guilt.

The words of his long dead friends rang in his ears, as they often did, reminding him of what he had lost, of the crimes that had been committed against him, of his guilt.

_"The time for talking between you and me has ended...Your death is the only thing that will let me rest in peace."_--The man Kanata looked to as a father had said that just before trying to kill him. In a way Kanata wished that Vegeta would have succeeded that day, perhaps it would have been better to fail at the beginning rather than come all this way only to lose at the end...

_"I think our friendship ended a long time ago. You murdered our families, our friends, and you'll kill us the moment we turn our backs...but rather than let that happen, we're going to kill you right here, right now." _

Kanata closed his eyes against the assault, not wanting to see these images again, not wanting to know how badly he'd failed...again.

_"You seemed so good, how could you not be with Grandpa's soul? But you're not...you're not like Grandpa, you're just some sort of sick twisted freak." _

His whole body trembled as accusations flew at him from the long dead lips of the woman he loved, how could this sort of thing happen? Even in a place as bleak and hopeless as the real universe was, for so much wrong to occur for no reason should have been unthinkable.

_"You don't know what love is, to you it's just a tool to manipulate with, just like I was."_

Golden wisps of energy rose up off the shaking man's body as he struggled with his overpowering emotions, with the memories fueled by a decade of self loathing and guilt.

_"Pan, I failed you...just like I failed when we fought Ammit. I wanted to keep you safe, but in the end I wasn't there when you needed me most. I will find the one who did this and I'll pay back every hurt you felt a thousand times over...even if it kills me."_

His own words drove a knife into his heart and twisted it. He'd said he would lay down his life for her, that he would do what ever it took, but he was failing. He was letting the little piece of shit that he used to be take him apart and steal his life's work away from him.

_"I hate you."_

Pan's last words to him echoed in his ears.

_"I hate you."_

She hadn't known what she was really saying, what she was doing to him when she spoke those words to him almost from the grave.

_"I hate you."_

It had become a mantra to him over the years, a way of making sure he never forgot what had really been taken from him.

_"I hate you."_

It wasn't just that the Arlean took Pan's body, though that would have been enough, he had also taken her love out of Kanata's life. The love that gave Kanata an anchor to hold onto, the love that greeted him every morning when he woke and seemed to drift around him when he laid down at night.

_"I hate you."_

"NO!" Kanata screamed as his golden ki erupted around him in a blinding inferno of rage fueled energy. His muscles strained against his skin as more and more power flowed through them, his whole body hurt as his blood seemed to turn to sharp gravel in his veins. The ground beneath him buckled and collapsed against the incredible power that he radiated, trees were uprooted and tossed through the air, and boulders were ripped from the ground and turned to dust under the pressure of his energy as all of the debris began to orbit around him. Suddenly the saiyan from the future's whole body was swallowed up in a blinding ball of light which sparkled and flashed, forcing Akira to cover his eyes.

And then, just as quickly as it had started, it was over. The trees and rocks fell to the ground with loud crashes and the light surrounding Kanata faded away, revealing a golden furred warrior who looked almost identical to Akira in every way.

"So it is possible," Kanata whispered as he glanced down at himself, "even without my tail my body remembers its true power; it just takes a little more work to get there." His eyes locked on Akira and a smile tugged at his lips, "You were wrong when you said this fight was over a moment ago...it didn't end until just now!"

o

o

A/N: This is a little late...okay, really late. I know I said that I would try to update on Saturdays, but after spending almost a dozen pages trying to put into words the reasons I disagree with George Orwell's views in "Politics and the English Language," I needed a break from all things writing and thinking. So I sat in front of the TV for the entire weekend turning poor townsfolk and thugs into shish kabobs with my katana blades and wondering when I was going to find the strength to get off my butt and finish this chapter. Apparently today was that day (since I had to go to work and school). Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it; I had wanted to end the whole Kanata-Akira fight so I could wrap up this arc of the story in the next chapter, but obviously that didn't happen. Next chapter will definitely see the conclusion to this fight and most of (if not all) the conclusion of what happens to the Arlean from this timeline. Anyway, please review and let me know what you thought.

Courtney: Wow, best chapter? Thanks! Since it practically fell out of my brain and onto the computer exactly as it was posted (I ran spell check and read through it once real quick to make sure there weren't any glaring mistakes) I'm glad that you liked it that much. The Majin Vegeta fight against Goku is pretty much my all time favorite DBZ fight, so to hear this compared with it is quite the compliment. As for Pan stepping in...well, you'll see in the next chapter.

donkeykong27: Procrastination is the best! Besides, I work better when the pressure's really on, for some reason I can't concentrate on things that "matter" until I really really really need to...sometimes not even then! I'm glad that you're torn about Kanata, that means I did a good job with him.

Toni the Mink: Akira...lose? No no no! That can't...shouldn't...might not...er, I guess I'll have to see what happens when my subconscious spits out the next chapter. The second wish will make itself known here pretty soon (I'm thinking next three chapters tops), so don't worry, it's coming. By the way, sorry you had to wait so long for this, hopefully the Author Alert Email was a welcome sight.

Geoffrey Oh: Thanks, I needed my fix! I start getting all fidgety when I post chapters and don't see reviews almost instantly (sometimes I'm checking my email before anyone would even have had the time to read the chapter), it's silly, but I'm always anxious to hear what everyone thinks. The whole other fighting style thing won't be much of a big deal, but it'll be explained eventually.

anouk: Nah, not sick in the head, just...okay, you're sick in the head. I try really hard to keep Kanata somewhat logical and yet still totally committed to killing the Arlean and anyone who gets in his way, it's hard because I don't personally agree with him, but it's an interesting writing exercise. So I'm glad that you're sick in the head and wanting to root for Kanata since that means that I've done an okay job with him.

TheTiny: Goku vs Kakarot...interesting thought. I guess Goku would have been blood thirsty had he not been dropped on his head as a child so you're right; it is kind of like those two going at it. Wow, that's kind of deep.

Nadz: Sadly I only own the first 6 episodes of Rurouni Kenshin and have only seen a handful of later episodes so I didn't know who Aoshi was until I looked it up after reading your review. I've been running through how I want this fight to end since I realized that it had to take place at this point in the story and it seems like it ends differently almost every time I think it through, but what ever happens, it definitely a key turning point for several characters in the story. Hopefully I'll be able to pull it off the way I want to, I guess we'll find out in the next chapter. By the way, thanks for the long review, especially since it reinforced a lot of what I was already thinking about this battle and brought up other things that I hadn't fully considered.

Nova Flame: Thanks, yeah 600 is pretty huge. With my first story I just wanted to get over 100 and with this one I only wanted as many as I had last time, but I never even thought about getting this many. Sorry Akira didn't put up much of a fight last time, he was kind of outclassed until he went all out, but at least he got his licks in this time around, right? In defense of Kanata, he did see a lot of his friends die because of the Arlean and he had to spend the next ten years dwelling on it...not that I agree with him, but he's got his reasons. Obviously the next chapter will deal a lot with the Z Fighters meeting up with the Arlean...and a little surprise he has for them.

Queen Arsinoe: Hopefully your a little happier after this chapter since this time it was all Akira beating up Kanata. His attitude is a bit...irksome, especially since I have to write it and it's kind of hard to keep him being a jerk (with a reason) without having him crossover into a complete ass who makes very little sense. I'm glad that you get involved in what I write, I suppose that means I'm doing a good job.

Midnight46: Cramming the night before is the only way to go. That way everything you push into your brain falls out before the week is over and you have that much more space for remember pointless things like the last episode of the Simpsons that you watched or that funny beer commercial that was just on. I'm glad that you liked the fight. I guess his timing could have been better, but up until now Akira hasn't been standing directly in his way.

Rejhan: Yes, Kanata needs to be stopped, but who can possibly do it? It's funny, but as I've read through the reviews to this chapter it seems like more and more people are starting to turn against Kanata and think that the Arlean isn't such a bad guy when compared with the revenge-bent saiyan from the future, hopefully everyone will be happy with how it ends...now if only I knew how to end it...

D-fire Master: Brilliant? Wow, I'm glad you like it. Thanks for the review.


	59. The Strongest Akira

**Chapter 59: The Strongest Akira**

o

A small hand surrounded by golden ki slammed into the side of Vegeta's head and sent him tumbling to the floor. Had Vegeta had something besides "what the hell?" running through his mind he would have had no trouble dodging or blocking the attack, but unfortunately for him, that was not the case.

The little warrior who had just leveled the Saiyan Prince landed next to his opponent and flashed a cocky grin. Vegeta had only a moment to guess at the meaning of the smile before he was kicked into the air by a second golden fighter and then sent crashing to the ground after a punch from a third.

At this point Vegeta's brain snapped back to reality and he rolled to the side just as a small, bare foot shattered the rocky floor where his head had been a moment ago. In an instant Vegeta was on his feet, his confusion gone as he watched the five naked children face him and grin identical grins.

"How do you like them?" the Arlean asked with a smug voice. "They're not as strong as the first batch, and obviously didn't get to develop for as long as they should have, but I think they'll be enough."

Vegeta's eyes remained locked on the five children that would look exactly like Akira once they reached adulthood, "You're attacking me with children now?" he asked the Arlean incredulously. "And here I thought using adult clones to do your dirty work was the most pathetic thing I'd ever heard of."

"Really? I would have thought that blowing up a planet filled with innocent people who never did anything to hurt you would have been at the top of the list, especially since your scouter reported that you were in space at the time. You weren't even willing to kill face to face, you had to do it from the safety of your ship...I don't have your physical strength, so I have to find other weapons to use against my enemies. You don't have that excuse, coward."

Vegeta's eyes shifted to the Arlean as a debate broke out within his mind. Should he apologize for what he did to Alrea or should he point out that he killed plenty of alreans before destroying their planet? Was he even really sorry about what he'd done?

The truth was, Vegeta didn't dwell much on the sins of his past. As a warrior he'd learned at an early age that looking back was one of the quickest ways to get killed. When he destroyed Arlea he was a different person, he hadn't met Kakarot or Bulma or any of the other people he'd come to think of as friends. He was still living under the whip of Frieza, still willing to give anything for the power to prove to the foul lizard that saiyans were the supreme warriors in the universe. He'd never thought of his actions in terms of good or evil, the universe was seen through the prism of gaining strength. If something helped him, it would be tolerated; if it was a hindrance or even just a nuisance, it was destroyed.

That was basically Vegeta's view on life for over thirty years. Good things give you power, worthless things don't. It wasn't until he stayed with Bulma while training to fight the androids and to finally eclipse Kakarot that his outlook began to change. Those who were weaker or weren't useful to him in his quest to become to be the strongest all of a sudden were at least tolerable, maybe even enjoyable. Bulma was the one who had started the change in him, shortly after that he realized that Kakarot had somehow become his best and only friend, and then the rest slowly but surely came along with it; before he knew what had happened he was a father and a protector of the little, dirtball planet that had become his home. However, despite the drastic change in his life, some instincts remained intact.

_"Never look back, unless you want to die at the hands of what is right in front of you." _ Vegeta's father had spoken those words to him on more than one occasion and he had always followed that advice. What was in the past could not be changed so there was no reason to think about it, one simply had to push forward in life.

Now it seemed that the past had caught up with him and he wasn't completely sure how to react. Usually when he didn't know what to do in a situation he chose the quickest, and often times most violent, way out possible, this time he did what he thought Kakorot would do.

"I am sorry for the lose of your people," Vegeta said in an even voice, "I was a diffe—"

"Sorry?" the Arlean interrupted as he let out a dry, evil chuckle. "You think saying 'sorry' will make this better?" He snorted and pressed a button on the controller, "Kill him."

The five child-versions of Akira shot forward in unison.

ooo

Akira spun away from a punch that Kanata sent at his face and tried to kick the older saiyan, but his attack was blocked almost before it started. The two Super Saiyans traded blows for a moment, leapt apart, and then charged each other again.

Kanata was clearly the faster of the two now and his fist slammed into Akira's chin while the younger warrior's attack was barely dodged. Akira fell back under the impact, leaving himself open to further combinations from his older self. Kanata delivered two quick uppercuts to Akira's face and then a knee to the young man's gut before sending him crashing to the ground with a powerful two hand shot to the back.

Akira hit the dirt hard, but was on his feet almost instantly, just in time to take the full force of Kanata's foot coming down on his head and driving him into the earth like a nail.

Kanata jumped back into the air and started powering up a ki blast, preparing to end the fight once and for all, but just before he fired it he felt a shift in the wind to his back. The older saiyan turned and fired his incomplete attack right into Akira's chest as the young man's fist hit Kanata in the face. The two saiyans rocketed away from each other and then hit the ground at almost the same time.

ooo

"Enough is enough Gohan," Eighteen growled as the ground shook again. Even without the ability to sense power levels she could tell that there were at least two battles going on nearby and possibly more. "Just point me in the direction of the nearest power level and I'll get us there in three seconds."

Gohan had to admit that she was probably right at this point. There was no reason to continue to make any sort of attempts at subtlety when other members of their group were fighting for their lives somewhere in or around the mountain. He had hoped that there could be a peaceful solution to the conflict, but that seemed less and less likely every time the ground trembled.

"Okay," Gohan said with a resigned sigh as he closed his eyes and searched for nearby life forces. "If we go…hold on, Pan's just a little ways farther this way," he pointed in the direction they'd been walking, "we'll get her and then we'll go straight to the others."

Eighteen didn't need any more convincing, she hurried down the tunnel at top speed with Gohan trailing only slightly behind her.

ooo

Vegeta blocked the punch from the first clone with his right arm and the one from the second clone with his left. The third clone tried to elbow the Saiyan Prince in the stomach, but Vegeta's left leg stopped that attack while at the same time his right leg was blocking a kick that had been aimed at his ribs by the forth clone. Unfortunately, this still left him one appendage short to block the punch that slammed into his head and drove him into the far wall.

The Saiyan Prince wasn't down for long. Barely a second after Vegeta hit the wall, golden light exploded around him as he powered up to Super Saiyan.

"I'm sick of playing with your little toys," Vegeta sneered as he floated away from the side of the cave and hovered in the center of the room. "You killing me won't bring your people back; it won't even really make you feel any better. Trust me, you'll just feel empty inside, you'll have nothing left to live for."

"I have plenty of things to live for after your death, little prince. I'm going to be the father of a new arlean race that will live right here on Earth."

"And what of the humans?"

"They'll have a chance to join us as we create a utopia, of course."

"And if they don't want you creating your utopia on _their_ planet?" Vegeta asked.

"They will join us or we will crush them."

"So what you're saying is: you're insane," Vegeta observed with a smirk. "I may have wronged you, but what you're planning to do to my friends and the rest of the people of Earth is just as bad."

"They had their choice and they decided to let a mass murderer live among them, one of their whores even willingly reproduced with you! Their accomplices to your crimes in my eyes."

"Say what you want about me, but don't you dare talk about Bulma like that!" Vegeta roared as he powered up an enormous ki blast and threw it at the Arlean. The attack nearly reached its target when a beam struck it and pushed it into the wall with a mountain shaking explosion.

The five warrior children attacked the Saiyan Prince from all sides. They weren't as strong as the older saiyan, but they were fast and there were plenty of them to keep Vegeta busy, on top of that he was still feeling a little drained from his battle with the clone when they first arrived.

Vegeta ducked under a punch, blocked a kick, batted one of the clones into the far wall of the cavern, and then was hit in the back of the head and the stomach simultaneously. He doubled over in pain and then was sent flying by a ki blast fired into his face at point blank range.

ooo

Kanata charged at Akira from behind, but at the last second the young man dodged to the side and the saiyan from the future slid past him. Akira didn't wait for his older self to recover his balance; he rushed forward and threw an elbow at Kantat's face. The older warrior ducked under it and sent a kick slicing through the air at Akira only to have the young man block in and counterattack with a quick jab. Kanata ducked and pushed his hand into the ground, kicking up at Akira and catching the younger fighter by surprise. The kick hit Akira in the chin and lifted him into the air, but he was quick to recover and throw a ball of ki down at the older man. Kanata pushed off the ground with his hand and took to the air to escape the explosion.

The two stared at each other as the dust settled. Akira brushed away a trickle of blood that was running down from the corner of his mouth and Kanata smiled.

"You're not as bad as I thought you'd be, I wasn't expecting you to put up such an excellent fight," the saiyan from the future commented casually as though he were discussing the weather.

"I'm glad you're entertained," Akira replied evenly. The clouds, that had been gathering overhead since the fight began, rumbled ominously as tiny sprinkles of water began coming down.

"You know you can't beat me, don't you?" Kanata asked. "You're going all out and you can barely keep up with me, but I'm not even using my full power."

Akira actually smiled. "Really? You look like you're breathing a bit hard for someone who's not going all out…are you sure I'm only just barely keeping up? Maybe you're just barely staying ahead."

Kanata's smile faded slightly, the stupid boy was almost right. He still wasn't quit going all out, but reaching Super Saiyan Five without his tail had taken a lot out of him and unless the fight ended shortly he would have to drop out of the transformation. Fortunately Kanata could tell that Akira was also draining quickly. This fight might come down to who was the better strategist and who had more reserves.

Kanata was certain that he held the edge in both categories.

"Let's find out," he challenged as he powered up a bit more and shot forward once again. Before Akira could even blink the older saiyan's knee had slammed into his chest and sent him flying.

ooo

Vegeta could have probably finished off his enemies if he used the Super Saiyan Three transformation; he was tired, but he had more than enough energy to make the change. The only real problem was his pride. He just couldn't bring himself to let mere children force him to change. If they were full grown he might consider it, but for some reason it was different since they were children.

If only they were _weaker_ children.

Vegeta slammed into the wall for the dozenth time since the fight began. He was dealing out as much if not more damage than he was taking, but there were still five clones and apparently they had at least some of Akira's power since they were much stronger than Trunks, Goten, and Gohan had been when they were Super Saiyans as children. Vegeta wasn't sure if he had more stamina than his five attackers, but at the moment he seemed to be fighting them to a standstill.

The Saiyan Prince pushed away from the wall and leveled one of the kid clones. A second clone chose that moment to come at him from behind, but Vegeta had long ago sniffed out that tactic and his elbow was already flying back into the young clone's face, stopping him cold and setting him up for the roundhouse kick that sent him into the far wall, shaking the whole cavern with the force of the impact.

"You're lucky there are so many of you," the Saiyan Prince said with a smile as the four remaining clones floated into his view while their fifth brother slowly pulled himself off the ground, "if this was a fair fight, you'd have all been dead long ago."

The clones' smirked simultaneously, cupped their hands at their sides, and then threw them forward as blue energy shot from their palms.

"Final Flash!" Vegeta screamed as his own attack met theirs head on.

For a moment the five different energy waves seemed to simply be pushing against each other, but then they slowly began to form a ball of energy where they met. The swirling sphere of energy grew larger and larger as both sides poured more and more power into the attack, and then the ball began to gradually make its way towards the tiring Saiyan Prince.

Vegeta clenched his teeth with exertion as he put everything he had into keeping the ball of energy as far away from him as possible, but no matter how much he pushed, the ki sphere continued to slowly bear down on him. The four little Super Saiyans just had too much power; there was nothing Vegeta could do.

Well, there was one thing.

"Ahhhh!" The large ki beam Vegeta was shooting from his palms suddenly erupted into an _enormous_ ki blast as the Saiyan Prince transformed. His long spiky hair whipped back and forth behind him as the force of his own power pushed him back slightly, but that was nothing compared to the effect it had on the ball of ki that had been closing in on him, which was now rushing towards the four clones.

And then, just when it seemed like Vegeta had the fight all wrapped up, the golden hair of the four clones became slightly longer and even spikier, signaling their transformation into Super Saiyan Twos. They still didn't have enough energy to keep the steadily growing ball of ki from continuing its deadly path towards them, but they had slowed it significantly.

The five warriors were at a standoff that could only be broken by the addition of a sixth fighter, which is exactly what happened as the fifth clone finally joined the power struggle.

ooo

Akira and Kanata were both fighting angry. Neither cared much about defense or strategy, they were both just throwing as many attacks as fast and as hard as they could. Ki beams burned against flesh, punches slammed into faces, kicks broke ribs and head butts opened gaping wounds on the opposing head, but still they fought on. Cuts, burns, broken bones were ignored as both focused totally on defeating the other as lightening crackled and thunder boomed overhead while the rain came down.

Of the two of them, Kanata was clearly in command of the fight, but Akira was still doing plenty of damage. The problem the young man was having was that he was not the offensive force that his older counterpart was. Akira did not have the ten years of training that focused on killing and maiming and it showed, despite his anger and his desire to hurt Kanata, he didn't have the killer instinct that he needed to keep up in a fight like this.

The fight had been going on for just over ten minutes when the deciding blow was struck. Akira had been on the attack, forcing Kanata back with a quick series of punches that had seemed to catch the older saiyan off guard. Then the young man threw one hand forward and fired a ki blast, but Kanata dodged out of the way and kicked Akira's arm into the air, creating an opening which allowed Kanata an unblocked ki blast directly into Akira's face. Before the young warrior could figure out what had happened, he hit the ground with earth shattering force.

The world seemed to be spinning very rapidly as Akira weakly opened his dark eyes, blinking away the rain that was dripping off his hair which was no longer golden and splashing on his face. He had somehow come to a rest against a large rock that had probably been pushed up when he slammed into the ground. The young man shook his head and instantly regretted it as pain shot through his body.

"It's over," Kanata's voice came from somewhere in front of him.

Akira willed the planet to stop spinning so he could see properly; the first thing his eyes managed to focus on was his older self standing over him with a strange look in his eyes. The mixture of triumphant glee, murderous rage, and almost sorrow was a bizarre thing to see, but somehow Kanata was pulling it off; however, it was not his eyes that had Akira's attention it was his hand that was slowly raised into an attack position.

"You lose, little boy," Kanata whispered as the hand was surrounded by golden ki. "I have changed during the last ten years…I've seen what the universe is really like and I've grown stronger. You, Goku, Vegeta, even Pan might not like what I've become, but it doesn't matter anymore, I'm doing what I have to do. I didn't plan on killing you, but you got in my way and I promised Pan I would do anything to make things right…ANYTHING!"

His fist rushed down at Akira's head, the young man was too weak and too tired to even pretend to defend himself against the deadly strike.

o

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A/N: Well, this didn't quite finish up everything from this fight, but it got a lot of it out of the way and the NEXT chapter for…maybe…sure will have all the conclusions to this little arc in it…hopefully. It would be nice if there was some sort of outline that I could follow so I could know in advance what was going to happen in what chapter, but there isn't. This story is sort of writing itself so every chapter is a bit of a surprise. I didn't do anymore proof reading than running spell check and rereading what I'd written once so if you happen to spot any glaring mistakes (or even some that aren't so glaring) let me know. I'm going to do my best to have the next chapter done by this weekend so I can get back to posting every Saturday, but we'll see what happens, it's time for finals so that makes my schedule a little hectic at the moment, but it also means that I'm almost done…until summer classes start…crap. Anyway, please review and let me know what you think.


	60. Victory and Defeat

**Chapter 60: Victory and Defeat**

o

_"No one is beyond salvation Kanata..."_

A strong breeze laced with falling rain blasted Akira in the face, but the fist that had generated the wind never reached the young man.

Kanata looked down at his hand in surprise, wondering why the limb had betrayed him. He shook his head slightly to rid himself of whatever random firing of nerve endings in his brain had brought that voice to his ears and then pulled his fist back again.

"You're so weak it's disgusting," Kanata growled at the injured young man that once, long, long ago he had been. "I'm the strongest, I'm better than I was when I was you, I alone can do what has to be done, and you...you're just a bad dream of what I used to be. It's time for the ghosts of my past to be laid to rest once and for all!" Once again his fist rushed down at Akira's unprotected head.

_"No matter how far we fall our creator, Jouten, still loves us; still calls for us in the darkness..."_

Again Kanata's fist froze in the air at the last possible second; defying the orders his brain was sending it. Akira looked up at his older self in confusion and was shocked to see the conflict in the eyes of the saiyan from the future.

_"I can do this,'_ Kanata told himself, _'I've killed thousands of people with my bare hands, he's no different.'_ For the third time his fist came back and was surrounded by golden energy, _'I'm going to kill him and prove that I've turned my back on all of my foolish weaknesses...'_ his breathing became labored and his hand began to shake, _'I'm not that person anymore, I can't be like him...he's the reason my Pan is lost forever!'_ And once again his fist came down on Akira.

_"No one is beyond salvation Kanata..."_

"Ahhh!" Kanata screamed as he fell to his knees, his hands firmly clasped over his ears as the words continued to echo inside his head.

_"...still calls for us in the darkness..."_

There was a brilliant flash of golden light and Kanata's long golden hair shortened and turned black, lying flat against his head as the rain continued to fall upon the two warriors.

Akira wasn't sure what was going on or what he should do as he stared in surprise at his older self. His first reaction was to see if Kanata was okay, but that was quickly ruled out since the saiyan from the future had been trying to kill him. His second thought was too attack Kanata while he was distracted, but that too was ruled about by the fact that he didn't have the power to do any damage and, even more than that, he couldn't attack a helpless opponent no matter how much he hated him. So, in the end, he did nothing. He just lay against the rock that he was propped up on, watched, and waited to see if Kanata would kill him or not.

ooo

Vegeta ground his teeth as he pushed everything he had into keeping the swirling ball of ki as far away from him as possible. He'd never really tested how a Super Saiyan Three compared to multiple Super Saiyans or Super Saiyan Twos; he hadn't really thought that he would ever be fighting other Super Saiyans. Apparently Super Saiyan Three was stronger than two or even three Super Saiyan Twos, but when you added a forth things started to get a bit tougher and the fifth put you at a large disadvantage.

Whether or not he was struggling so much because of his battle with the clone had left him partially drained or because being a Super Saiyan Three was extremely taxing anyway, he couldn't be sure. One thing he could be sure of those was this: at the rate things were going he would not be able to hold this form for too much longer and if he was forced to drop down a level or out of the Super Saiyan form altogether, he would not survive the battle.

However, there was nothing he could really do about it at the moment. The ball of ki was too large and the cavern to small for him to dodge out of the way should he decide to cut his losses and break off the power struggle. He had to play this out until the bitter end and hope that whatever it was that let Kakarot always make it out of these sorts of situations would be with him today.

The ball of ki was definitely moving towards him now as the five naked children began walking forward while they continued firing their energy blasts. Vegeta could hear their snickers as they enjoyed their quickly approaching moment of victory.

"Ha!" the Saiyan Prince yelled as he converted as much of his life force as he safely could into energy and threw it into his attack. His energy beam grew larger and for a moment it started to push the five clones back, but then the burst of power began to fade and they were once again moving forward. The end was near.

ooo

Pan was still standing in the doorway, staring numbly at the sight before her when her father gently touched her shoulder. Without looking up at him, she stepped to the side so he and Eighteen could see the pitiful occupants of the small room.

There was a moment of silence and then Gohan whispered, "We need to go..."

"But—" Pan started to protest, but her father shook his head.

"There's nothing we can do for them right now, we need to find Vegeta and the others."

The young woman nodded, she could feel the overwhelming power being generated by the Saiyan Prince somewhere nearby as well as several strange ki signatures that felt familiar and yet very different.

Eighteen began to push the door back into place, wondering how long it would take to reach the fight and whether or not Vegeta would have saved any of the fun stuff for her when she finally got there.

ooo

Kanata had been on his knees for only a few seconds when he suddenly stood up and turned his dark eyes towards his younger self. "It's all your fault!" he yelled as he grabbed Akira roughly by the neck and lifted him off the ground. "You let her die! If you would have just gone to her...but you didn't...you son of a bitch!" He slammed the young man down onto the ground as his whole body trembled. "You don't deserve her...we don't deserve her. You should have died that day, not her!"

"Wh...what are you talking about?" Akira whispered.

"When I was you...I didn't save her...I didn't deserve her, but you, because I made sure she lived, you'll get to spend your life with her and you don't deserve it...you should be dead!"

He swung his fist down, but again it froze as if some sort of invisible shield were protecting Akira.

"Why can't I do this?" the older saiyan screamed into the cloudy sky as the rain splashed down on his face. "I turned my back on all that you were on the day she died, there's nothing left of you inside me, why can't I kill you?"

Akira didn't bother to answer since the question apparently wasn't actually directed at him, not that he had any sort of a good answer anyway.

ooo

It was over. Vegeta felt a strange prickling sensation against his skin and knew that his body had reached its breaking point and would soon be forcing him to back down from the power output. It was a sensation he'd felt hundreds of times when he was trying to become a Super Saiyan and catch up with Kakarot and the mysterious youth from the future. He had only a few seconds before his body gave out and then his life would be over.

Not quite the way he'd pictured going out, killed by five naked kids who looked like his adopted son. Still he went down fighting and that was something...if only they weren't kids and actually had some clothes on!

Vegeta took a deep breath and waited for the inevitable. He was still firing his ki blast, but the urgency was gone, he knew what was coming.

Suddenly the force pushing against him grew weaker as first one, then a second, and finally a third clone was hit from the side of the room by an unknown attacker.

With those pushing against him reduced to two, all of the energy Vegeta was pouring into the ki blast suddenly was more than enough to finish the attack off. The ball of ki rocketed away from him and plowed into the wall, exploding brilliantly.

ooo

Kanata and Akira's heads both snapped around as the mountain that they had come out of suddenly erupted in a fiery explosion, showering them with rocks and debris.

"Pan!" both warriors cried out in unison, ignoring the remains of the mountain that pelted their skin. They had felt the fight going on in the mountain between Vegeta and someone else, but their own battle had kept them so distracted that they hadn't realized that things had escalated so much. Now they couldn't really feel anything, not Vegeta, not Pan, no one.

"Please Kami, not again..." Kanata whispered as he shot into the air and headed for the crater that had once been a mountain.

Akira, who had no where near as much power as his older self slowly rose into the air and weakly followed after as fast as he could.

ooo

Krillin's legs gave out from under him and his butt hit the floor of the Lookout hard, but the expression of shocked disbelief and instant grief remained frozen on his face. The rest of the Z Fighters had similar expressions as they turned away from the edge of the Lookout, their eyes wide is surprise and fear. Only Dende retained his neutral expression though his body seemed to sag against his ancient, wooden stave; he refused to turn his focus away from the distant mountain that might have just become the final resting place of several of his friends.

"What? What's happened?" Valese asked fearfully while she tried to comfort a crying Kumo.

"They're gone," Master Roshi whispered, barely able to believe the words that were coming out of his mouth.

"What?" Chi-Chi screeched. "No, no that can't be!"

"What happened?" Bulma demanded angrily, her own eyes filling with tears that betrayed her true feelings.

"Dad was fighting someone and..." Bra's voice trailed off as the reality of the loss struck home.

"There was an explosion more powerful than anything I've felt in a long time," Uubu finished for her as he gently placed a comforting arm around the aqua-haired, young woman, she instantly turned and buried her face in his chest.

The entire Lookout grew quiet except for the sobs of little Kumo who didn't understand what was happening, but knew that he didn't like the awful power his fledgling senses had picked up and that his mommy was sad about something.

There was a long moment of near silence and then Dende felt what he was praying for and smiled joyfully as he turned to his friends.

ooo

Pan cautiously opened her eyes and took the small breath of air her lungs were begging for, coughing as she inhaled nearly as much dust as air. Darkness seemed to surround her; the only sound she could hear was the faint drip dip of water somewhere nearby, several smaller forms where desperately wiggling under her chest and stomach, apparently not appreciating the protection she was giving them. The young woman let out a soft groan of annoyance, pulled her legs under her, and then pushed. The rocks that had covered her and the several insectoid females she was protecting rolled to the side and fell away from them, letting in what light the rainy day could provide and allowing the cool water to ease the pain of the minor burns and scratches that marked her body.

The insectiods began blindly groping about, searching for either an escape or a place to hide.

Pan glanced around the newly formed crater, looking for her father and Eighteen, and wondering if there was any point in trying to get the little aliens to understand that she had just saved their lives.

Thoughts of the little aliens' opinions of her vanished as her eyes fell upon a blood covered arm sticking out from beneath a nearby boulder. In an instant she had crossed the remains of the room and ripped the stone away, revealing her father. Gohan had taken the worst of the blast and it showed.

They had only taken a few steps down the tunnel when they felt the explosion. Faster than Pan could even think, Gohan had grabbed her and Eighteen and pulled them back into the slaves' room. Just before the explosion hit, Gohan had spread his arms wide and used his own life force to shield them as best he could from the destructive energy.

"Dad," Pan whispered. He was pretty badly injured, that much she could tell, but she could still feel a strong pulse of life within him.

His eyes slowly fluttered open and then quickly closed as consciousness brought the full force of the pain that he was in with it. "Hey," he whispered back with a weak smile, "Are you okay?"

"I've had worse," she replied as she smiled back. Had he not been as injured as he was, she would have hit him for asking such a stupid question when he was obviously the one who was hurt, but since he was injured she decided to humor him.

"Eighteen?"

"I'm here," the android replied as some nearby rocks shifted and the beautiful android emerged looking a little scuffed up, but basically uninjured. Several more insectoids scurried out from under her and joined those whom Pan had protected in searching for a way out of the disaster area.

Eighteen glanced around and her eyes widened. With the large crater that marked the spot where half the mountain had been destroyed, the once tall, beautiful mountain looked more like an ice-cream cone. It seemed unlikely that anyone who did not think as fast as Gohan could possibly have survived this.

"Shit!" a loud, gruff voice cursed from not too far away.

Pan helped her father to his feet and then let him lean heavily upon her as they stumbled towards the voice with Eighteen.

What they found would have made them laugh had the owner of the voice not been in such bad shape. Vegeta was stuck under a rock and apparently was too weak to push it off of himself. The oldest saiyan's fight had taken everything out of him and now he could barely keep the boulder from crushing him, much less actually move the thing.

"Do you need some help there, tough guy?" Eighteen asked with a smile.

"Of course not!" Vegeta replied as he strained to push the rock away.

"Are you sure?" she was barely bothering to hide her gloating over his obvious weakness now. It wasn't often that the Prince of all Saiyans asked for or even needed help, the android planned on milking it for all it was worth.

"It will be a cold day in hell before I ask for help from a glorified toaster oven!" Vegeta snapped.

"Suite yourself," the glorified toaster oven replied casually as she leaned on the boulder.

Vegeta struggled for another moment and then grumbled something under his breath that sounded like it could have been "I need help" or "I'll kill you," with Vegeta you could never be sure.

"What was that?" Eighteen asked, cupping a hand to her ear.

"I said...oh never mind!" Vegeta's face turned red and he went back to pushing futily on the boulder.

Eighteen let him work at it for another few minutes and then sighed, "Oh all right, I won't make you ask." With a flick of her wrist the boulder was sent flying and Vegeta was freed.

He gave her a cold glare and then pulled himself to his feet, determined to at least stand on his own even if he'd needed help to escape from under the rock.

A few feet away some more boulders began to shift and then Trunks appeared, dirty, bruised, and bleeding. He didn't look like he was very steady on his feet, but his injuries weren't life threatening either.

Trunks caught his father's eye and smiled triumphantly, Vegeta gave him a small nod and a tiny smile, no more was said of the younger man's deciding role in the battle between Vegeta and the little clones. Trunks had long ago learned how to recognize what his father was saying even when the Saiyan Prince never opened his mouth. Vegeta had practically given the demi-saiyan a hug and said that he couldn't have won the battle without him.

"Where's Akira and Kanata?" Pan asked suddenly, looking around with new sense of alarm.

"And Tien?" Gohan added as Eighteen, Trunks and Vegeta walked/limped towards him.

Not far from where Trunks was standing, a large section of the cavern wall that had collapsed in on its self suddenly exploded as a golden light erupted from underneath it and then a boulder a little ways away from it also vanished in a blinding light.

"Kill them," a menacing voice called out from within the dust.

ooo

"They're alive, they're alive, they're alive!" Chi-Chi, Bulma, and Videl were hugging each other and hopping up and down while Kumo giggled and preformed an impressive little dance of his own at his grandmother's feet. An embarrassed looking Bra watched and secretly considered joining in, only the pride that she had inherited from her father kept her in her spot. The rest of the group was too busy sighing with relief and trying to get their focus back on their loved ones to care much about the three women's antics.

Well, most of them.

"Yeeaaahhh!" Roshi cried as his head bounced to the rythem of the three women's chests, his eyes wide and in full lecher mode.

He was just about to move in to get a _closer_ look when two fists came down on the back of his head at the same time.

"That's not very nice!" Valese admonished him with a shake of her finger as he turned and looked up at her with a hurt expression on his face.

"And I doubt Vegeta or Gohan would appreciate you looking at their wives that way!" Icalla added as she scowled and prepared to take another swing at the old pervert should he try anything.

Roshi would have said something to defend himself, but at that moment he was admiring the way Icalla's blouse had come slightly twisted and was showing off a nice black (probably silk) bra through the space between the buttons. "Ehhhh..." his voice trailed off as his eyes became slightly glazed.

"Ahhhcho!"

The barrel of a large machine gun poked Master Roshi in the nose. "Watch yourself you dirty creep!" a now blonde Launch snarled as Roshi paled and then took off towards the Palace. "Grrrr, get back here pervert!" Launch yelled as she gave chase, firing her gun at the turtle hermit and anything else that moved.

The rest of the Z Fighters glanced at each other.

"Do you think we should go save him?" Uubu asked cautiously.

Bulma gave Chi-chi a wink and said, "Nah, I'm sure he'll be fine!"

ooo

Kanata saw the group of Z Fighters standing together and smiled in relief. They were all still okay…or at least the ones he could see were. He had no idea where Tien had gone off to and at the moment he didn't really care, the only thing that mattered was the dark haired beauty who was holding her father up and looking around the crater.

Suddenly two large powers made their presence known amongst the rocks as their momentary prisons were destroyed by their power up. Two naked children in full Super Saiyan glory stepped away from the rocks and then a third weaker child with dark hair followed one of them, supporting an injured Arlean.

The saiyan from the future's eyes narrowed as he caught sight of the person who had ruined his life, but before he could do anything rash, the two pintsized Super Saiyans cupped their hands and launched simultaneous attacks at the cluster of Z Fighters. On instinct, Kanata's hand flew in front of his face and he vanished.

A little ways behind him, Akira made the exact same motion.

ooo

Pan was the closest to the two attacking Super Saiyans and as such, she had a perfect view of her death racing towards her. This was the end and she knew it. She hadn't been significantly weakened by the explosion, but since she wasn't even close to powered up, the two attacks would be more than enough to kill her and probably all those standing behind her. If she'd had five seconds of warning she could have transformed and at least survived the initial attack, maybe even defeated the two children depending on how strong they were and how much Trunks and Eighteen could help. Unfortunately she didn't have five seconds or even two seconds, the only thing she had time to do was spread her arms and try to take as much of the blasts as possible, so that her friends would have a better chance of survival.

Before she could do that, two tall figures appeared in front of her, their arms already spread out and their bodies perfectly positioned in front of each of the attacks. There was a feint shimmer of ki as two weak shields were hastily—and futilely—thrown up and then the ki blasts struck them.

Pan stared up in awe at her two guardian angels as shadows created by the red energy attacks they were struggling against danced across each man's face and over their shoulders. Both cried out in pain as the attacks continued to drill through the shields and then finally struck home. One went down shortly after his defenses collapsed, the other struggled for a moment and then he too collapsed to the ground.

But a moment was all Pan and Eighteen had needed.

Just as the first of her defenders went down, Pan transformed and fired her own attack back into the ki blast, pushing it away from her. The second man went down and Eighteen was there to pick up the slack, standing shoulder to shoulder with Pan as their ki beams struggled against the powerful push of the miniature Super Saiyans' attacks.

For a moment things seemed to be going the Z Fighters' way, but then the ki beams began to creep towards them once again. It was at that instant that Trunks stepped into the foray, standing just in front of Pan and Eighteen, and firing energy blasts out of each hand along the paths of the two women's.

The three warriors' attacks overwhelmed those of the two little clones and the spots where the two had been standing were enveloped in twin explosions.

Trunks' hair turned lavender, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell forward the moment he stopped firing his energy beams. He'd been extremely close to the explosion that had destroyed the mountain and he had just used the last of his power to make sure that his friends survived the second attack of the clones; he had nothing left in his tank.

Pan was not quite as bad off, but she too was forced out of her transformation as she greedily sucked in air. As soon as she could form a cognitive thought, her eyes sought out her two protectors to see how they were. The sight that greeted her drove all that precious air out of her lungs.

Akira and Kanata lay face down in the dirt, completely still.

"No," she whispered as she knelt between them, she gently turned Akira, who had fallen first, over and shuddered. His face was covered in cuts and bruises, his nose was broken and the rest of him looked to be in similar shape. Instinctively she knew that most of his injuries were not from taking the ki blast for her, but how he had gotten like this was the last thing on her mind. "Please Akira; don't leave me. Not again."

If he could hear her, he wasn't showing it.

Next to him, Kanata stirred and then let out a soft, weak groan.

"Kanata? Can you hear me?" Pan asked as she turned to look at him.

The saiyan from the future tried to roll over, but only managed to turn his head so he could see her. "You're okay," he whispered in relief.

Pan smiled, "Thanks to you two."

A strange look came over Kanata's face as he noticed the limp form of Akira, with a sigh he forced his body to obey him and rolled onto his back, staring up at the cloudy sky as the droplets of rain splashed down on his face.

Pan was about to question him when a wet cough erupted from nearby. She turned and looked in surprise at the large insectoid sitting against a something she couldn't make out.

Kanata was on his feet in an instant, fueled by energy he should not and could not possibly have had left, but somehow it was there. The saiyan from the future practically ran to the Arlean, leaving Pan torn between the desire to go after him and the need to stay with Akira.

"Go," Eighteen said quietly as she placed a hand on the young woman's shoulder, "I'll keep an eye on Akira."

Pan hesitated for a second, but then nodded her thanks and ran after the future version of her boyfriend.

The object Pan couldn't make out when she'd first noticed the Arlean was a large sheet of metal that had probably once been the wall of a room, now it was the final resting spot of the last of the arleans. The metal had been broken and twisted and a large piece of it was sticking through the insectoid's chest. Sticky blue-purple blood dripped from the sharp metal and ran out of the large hole in the Arlean's chest, it was doubtful that he would even survive an attempt at moving him away from the wall.

Kanata opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, the last of the clone children leapt over the remains of the metal wall and landed between the two saiyans and his master. He looked back at the dying arlean and then at the two saiyans, his face devoid of all emotion but one of his hands began to glow as a ki beam was charged. The little boy raised his hand and aimed it at Kanata.

"Tri-Beam!"

The clone vanished in a blinding flash as Tien appeared in the sky above the mountain. The triclops held his hands in front of him for another few seconds and then dropped to the ground. He gave the two saiyans a quick nod and then headed towards Gohan and the others, somehow instinctively understanding that this was a moment Pan and Kanata needed to face by themselves.

Kanata watched the human warrior for a few seconds and then turned back to the impaled Arlean.

"I…ca…can't believe the…universe sided with…the monkeys," the large alien rasped, a fit of coughing hit him and blood sprayed from his mouth and ran down his chin.

Kanata looked down on his enemy, the creature that had put him through hell for the last ten years and scowled. The bastard was getting what he deserved, even if might not be Kanata's hand that ended his life, but at the same time…he didn't feel the way he had expected to at this moment. The Arlean's death felt empty and the victory hollow; it didn't even feel like a victory, more like a defeat. Yes, the Arlean was going to die, but what did it matter? Pan, Kanata's Pan, was still gone forever and he was lost in the darkness of his own heart, doomed to burn in hell for the crimes that he had gladly committed just so he could have this opportunity…just so he could have this hollow, pointless victory.

As the saiyan from the future stared down at his broken, beaten tormentor a sensation seemed to flutter through his heart that he couldn't quite place. It wasn't anger over not getting to kill the Arlean himself, nor was it sadness over how hollow the victory felt, it was…

"Ther…there is no justice…Arlea will not be…avenged…"

"Your slaves survived," Pan whispered, "and their children. My father saved them."

The Arlean looked at her in surprise as his large eyes focused and unfocused on her face. "I suppose…I shall s…see them…shortly anyway. Enjoy your…slaughter."

"They won't be killed," Kanata said softly, surprising even himself with the words that seemed to come unbidden from his mouth. And then he understood what he was feeling. It was something he hadn't really felt in over ten years. He pitied the Arlean. He actually, truly felt sorry for the monster somehow. It didn't make sense, not even to him, but once his mind had found the correct name for the sensation, he couldn't deny that it was how he felt. At this moment of revenge, he suddenly wished that there was another way, not only for his enemy, but also for himself. Somehow he felt that if the Arlean could have been saved, then maybe there would have been a chance for his own salvation as well. "Your people will live on," he said quietly. "They'll never know of hateful monster you were when you sired them…they'll only know of the Arlean who brought his people back from extinction."

"W…why?" the Arlean was nearly gone now, but even if he wasn't the shock from the words might have killed him.

"Because, your revenge was already taken care of, Goku and Bulma saw to it that the man you wanted to kill was destroyed along time ago, replaced by someone who would protect this planet and its people and because…even those of us lost in the dark are being called back into the light. You might not have made it back in your lifetime, but your children will not walk in your darkness."

The Arlean's eyes clouded over as death finally took him, but the expression on his face remained. It was an expression of confusion at the words of the saiyan from the future, but also one of…peace.

o

o

A/N: Well, it's 11:55, so technically it's still Sunday, but only just barely. Anyway, I'm not sure if I pulled off what I wanted to here. I don't hate it, but…I don't know, I guess I'll just have to see what you think. This was supposed to be the chapter were Kanata at least starts to turn back towards who he was, obviously that's not a one step journey, but this is the beginning. What do you think? Did it work? Was it dumb? Did his change of heart make very little sense? Review and let me know what you thought.

Queen Asinoe: Hey thanks for wishing me luck, fortunately even though they're a pain, I usually do pretty well on finals, I'm good at taking tests for some reason. Anyway, I'm glad you liked the chapter. I nearly fell out of my chair when you said you hoped there would be some divine intervention because I had already written how the fight would end and "divine intervention" was how I described it to myself.

Anouk: Hooked forever? Wow, I was worried that the last chapter was one of the weaker ones since I wrote it in a bit of a rush, but I'm glad you liked it so much.

legend: Yeah, the chibi clones were one of my subconscious's better ideas (I hadn't given them much thought until they appeared at the end of chapter 57). Initially they weren't going to put up much of a fight against Vegeta, but for some reason they just kept slapping him around whenever I tried to write their scenes. I think that I will probably go back at some point and add a bit more to the fight between Vegeta and them because at the moment it seems kind of...hallow, I guess. Anyway, I'm glad you liked it.

Courtney: Well, the way time travel worked in the Android/Cell saga was that traveling back created a new dimension/timeline/whatever. Anything changed in the past of that timeline had no effect on the future(s) that Trunks and Cell came from. I guess that was how Mr. Toriyama decided to get around the whole "if the androids are beaten in the past then Trunks wouldn't have had to go back, but if he didn't go back they couldn't be beaten" thing.

Geoffrey Oh: I don't know if school sucks, learning is actually fun, but going to school sucks. I wish they'd just let me decide when I want to go to the class...basically I just want the intire universe to revolve around my every whim, that's not too much to ask, is it? Anyway, I totally agree with you about the chapter, it was a bit rushed. Usually I type my chapters out and then print them and make corrects, additions, and whatever else the chapter seems to need, but I've been struggling to write that chapter for the last week so I just wanted it to be done and over with. I guess after I finish the story I'll have to go back and revise some of the weaker chapters (like this one). Thanks for catching the spelling errors, I don't know how those got past me.

TheTiny: The inspiration of Vegeta being defensive of Bulma came from one of the last few episodes of DBGT, Bulma (after hitting Vegeta with the Blutz/Brute ray) says that she's "Vegeta's princess." Of course he (in oozaru form) then proceeds to take a shot at her with a ki beam from his mouth, but that was all a joke...I hope. Anyway, I hope you liked the way the ending to the Akira-Kanata fight played out, no one could intervene because I had to have Kanata take a step towards being good again on his own.

Francis Keenan: Vegeta kills them because he liberated them? Hmm, it's hard to remember that far back, I haven't seen that episode in forever and I don't own it, but it should be coming out in DBZ Uncut sometime in the next few months, I'll have to watch it then (in all its glorious uncut footage). From what I remember he just sort of goes up into space, steps out of the pod and then laughs while he blows up the planet, but I could be wrong. Did he actually say that he was destroying the planet because he liberated them or was it just sort of implied?

Nova Flame: You didn't like that cliffhanger? I personally think that was one of my better ones. I honestly tried to think of a way that Vegeta could just say he was sorry, but there's no way someone whoes whole life has been built around revenge is going to accept the object of his hatred saying, "I'm sorry I blew up your planet and killed everyone you knew."

donkeykong27: Just what are you trying to say? It just so happens that I like taking classes, I just put off my assignments until the last possible second and then gripe about how annoying they are. As I said in an earlier response, if the universe (or at least my classes) would just revolve around my every whim, there'd be no problem. Actually, I detest summer classes, but I also don't want to be paying for college for the rest of my life either so I'm trying to get done as quickly as possible. You don't need to apologize for thinking that the chapter wasn't as good as others, I think it's one of the worst ones I've done in the last few weeks. I just had to get it out of the way so the important stuff could happen.

Toni the Mink: In Vegeta's defense, there are five of them. In all of DBZ/GT there were only five Super Saiyans ever on the shows (Goku, Vegeta, Trunks, Goten, Gohan). I kind of agree with you though, but I needed the chapter to end where it did. Perhaps later I'll go back and fix this chapter so Vegeta does a bit more damage _on screen_ (I do say that he was giving as good or better than he was getting), I just wanted to get this fighting stuff out of the way...wow, I can't believe that _I_ actually said something like that. I've been trying to show that not a lot of time has passed since Akira and Kanata started fighting, it's just one of those DBZ things were time inside a fight moves slower than time outside, but I guess it's a mute point now. Don't worry about being negative (you really haven't been _that_ negative), you're not required to always like everything about every chapter. I actually like hearing when I don't do as well, because it let's me know if there are things I need to fix.

Rejhan: You hated the cliffhanger? Cliffhangers are the best part of stories! Well, they would be if you didn't have to wait multiple days for the next chapter anyway…at least this chapter doesn't really end with a cliffhanger, right? I'm glad that you liked Vegeta's thoughts on his past actions, the character introspection scenes are some of my favorite to write and Vegeta's by far the most interesting character for those types of scenes.


	61. After the Battle

**Chapter 61: After the Battle**

o

A/N: Just a warning so you don't go into this chapter expecting anything dramatic. This is an almost entirely introspective chapter. Very little happens physically…at all. Still, it's important and sets the scene for the next few chapters in which far more interesting things will be happening again.

o

Akira's eyes slowly fluttered open and then closed against the bright sunlight that was shining over the shoulder of the bald green skinned man who was standing over him.

"Welcome back Akira," Dende said with a smile. In the backround Kumo could be heard protesting his mother's attempts to keep him from running to his occasional-babysitter.

"How did I get here?" Akira asked as he sat up and looked around, confirming his suspicions that he was back at the Lookout.

"Kanata dropped you off just a moment ago," Dende answered and then guessing at the young man's next question added, "He went back to the mountain to get the others after I healed him."

Suddenly his last few minutes of consciousness came rushing back to him and Akira's eyes widened in alarm. "Where's Pan?" he demanded. "Is she alright?"

"She's fine, you and Kanata gave her enough time to power up and finish off the clones." Dende replied. "Kanata said she was going to stay back at the mountain with those little aliens you guys found until everyone else has been brought back here. And then I think he's going to take Bulma, the aliens, and her to Capsule Corp."

Akira gave a small nod, but said nothing. Kanata! It was always Kanata! Kanata who was stronger than him! Kanata who wanted to kill him! Kanata who kissed Pan! Kanata who looked like the hero taking care of the hachians that he would have killed if Akira hadn't stopped him! And now, Kanata who saved his life and was ferrying everyone back to the Lookout. Why couldn't the others see what the man really was? Why couldn't they see that he was a murderer? Were they really this blind or could they somehow see something that Akira was missing?

Before his mind could come up with an answer, he was brought back to the real world as Bulma's arms wrapped tightly around him.

"Oh, thank kami! I was so worried about you guys!" the older woman said as she hugged the young man she saw as a second son.

Akira thought he heard Dende say, "You don't need to thank me, I didn't do anything." But before he could be sure, the namek had wandered off to give the two a little privacy.

"I'm fine," Akira said quietly, "I'm just tired."

Bulma's motherly instinct kicked in instantly and she shooed him off to the room he'd slept in the previous night to get some sleep, telling him she'd wake him up for lunch once everyone had returned to the Lookout.

Akira thanked her, but said he wasn't really hungry and that he'd rather just sleep until dinner at least. As he headed up to bed, he considered warning her that Kanata should not be trusted and that she should be careful around him, but he knew she would be safe with his older self. Kanata had—for the most part—done everything in his power to protect he and Akira's friends and family, the only person the saiyan posed any threat to was Akira himself.

In his haste to escape all human (and saiyan) contact, he missed his adoptive mother's eyes narrow when he begged off lunch. He didn't know it, but he had just informed her that something was still wrong with him, something more than just a lack of sleep. Still, even though she knew something was wrong with him, Bulma kindly let Akira go without saying another word, storing the new piece of information aside for now, but promising that she'd take it up with him later should the need arise.

Akira went up to his room, closed the door and lay down in the soft, warm bed, but he did not sleep, he couldn't sleep.

He had lost the fight to Kanata. Even worse than that, it looked like he had lost Pan to his older self as well.

Not that he didn't deserve both defeats.

He'd fought extremely poorly against his older self. The excuse of being tired was probably valid, but it wasn't why he'd lost. He could have ended the fight several times, but he never really pressed any advantage he gained, he just sat back and waited until Kanata figured out how to beat him. He was lucky he wasn't dead. Actually, he wasn't really sure why he _wasn't_ dead. There were two very obvious reasons why he'd lost: he was weak and stupid, just like Kanata continually told him.

Perhaps that was why he felt like he might have lost Pan as well. Weak and stupid. He'd been too weak and too scared to tell her what was happening when he thought he was losing his mind during the last week and a half. He'd pushed her away, thinking that he was helping her, but really that was just an excuse to remain in his weakness, to wrap himself in his fear and call it sacrifice. He was such a bastard. Trunks and Kanata were right; he didn't deserve someone like Pan. She deserved better...he wasn't sure if Kanata could exactly be called _better_, but at least the asshole made sure Pan knew how he felt, that—to his great shame—was more than Akira had done since this whole thing started.

So what was he going to do now? It was too late to win his fight with Kanata, but maybe things could still be worked out between him and Pan...a big _maybe_. The question really was, should he still try to win her? Was it selfishness on his part to try and keep her for himself? She'd made her choice after all, hadn't she? If he tried to convince her that she'd chosen wrong...was that the right thing to do? Should he just accept that she'd chosen someone else and support her regardless of how he felt?

Akira wanted to make sure he did things right after treating her badly for the last week and a half, plus there was the rather large, guilty feeling he was still carrying around over his plan to break up with her. He wished he knew what she wanted him to do, that would make life so much easier...girls should come with some sort of instructions, they were too confusing!

He closed his eyes and sighed. Unless she did something to make him think otherwise, he'd make this sacrifice for her. He'd be happy for her even though she was with someone else.

Akira vowed, as sleep reached up to take him, that he would be nice to her from here on out. No more snippy remarks, no more anger over her relationship with Kanata...he'd just be there for her in what ever way she wanted him to be.

Even if it was only as…a friend.

Sleep finally claimed him and for the next few hours his brain assaulted him with dreams of Kanata and Pan. Even in his dreams he was as happy for her as he could be, pretending not to feel the painful stab of jealousy every time her lips brushed those of his future self, but in the real world the muscles in his face flinched every time the image played through his mind.

ooo

Videl thought that she had been very patient so far today. Between having her husband and only child go off to fight an evil alien and who-knows-how-many powerful clones, hearing that everyone was dead, then hearing that they in fact weren't dead, and finally seeing how injured her husband actually was, she thought that it was a impressive show of restraint that she hadn't broken down into hysterics.

She glanced at her mother in law who was bawling her eyes out with relief that both Gohan and Pan had survived the confrontation with the Arlean.

Yes, it was good that she was keeping things together, even if she felt the way Chi-Chi looked.

"Are you okay," Gohan whispered softly to her as he put his arm around her and smiled.

Videl nodded absentmindedly as her eyes scanned his body. His shirt was nonexistent, his pants were beyond repair, and his hair was even messier than usual, but he was back to full health, the burns and bloody wounds had completely vanished, thanks to Dende. Gohan had even retrieved his glasses from their room...though why he had neglected picking up a spare shirt while he was there was beyond her. "I'm just glad you're alright," she whispered at last.

"Well, you know me," he flashed a goofy grin that he had inherited from his father, "I'm hard to kill."

"Stay that way, okay?" For a brief moment the hysterics threatened to push their way to the surface. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you or Pan." Videl took a deep breath and exerted considerable self control over her rebellious body, forcing it to remain calm and hide the fears that always tried to overtake her whenever her family was in trouble. She'd already lost a mother and a father-in-law before their time. That was enough for her lifetime. Everyone else had to die of extreme old age...preferably in their sleep.

Gohan's smile dipped just slightly and his voice became serious, "I promise I'll always do my best."

She frowned for a moment and then let out a small, slightly-forced chuckle that broke some of the tension surrounding the couple. "You'd better."

Gohan leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips, sealing the deal.

ooo

Dende was tired. In fact, he was more than tired, he was exhausted...and it's not everyday that a god is exhausted. He'd been healing the Z Fighters as quickly as Kanata was bringing them back from the battle site and now he had reached his physical limit.

Healing wasn't the easiest skill in the universe; it took a lot of concentration, a lot of ki manipulation, and a lot of energy. Not only that, but the stronger the fighter and more serious the wound, the more energy and concentration the healing took. That all of the Z Fighters with the exception of Pan, who had remained with the female aliens they had saved from the caves, were now in perfect health and back to their maximum (Vegeta, Gohan, and Trunks actually at new maximums thanks to their saiyan heritage) power levels was a testament to the young namek's skill.

"Okay," Dende said with a sigh as Vegeta, who had insisted on going last for some odd reason, sat up, "that's everyone. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go rest for a few minutes."

Without waiting for a reply he headed back to the palace so he could sit down and perhaps get a bite to eat. There were days, like today, that he almost wished for the "good ol' days" when he was helping in the battle against Frieza and everyone had a power level below half a million. Back then he could heal his friends over and over without breaking a sweat. Now that every one of the saiyans had power levels that were basically off the charts, it was much more difficult to heal more than one or two of them at a time.

_'What would Guru think if he saw his prize student so winded after only half a dozen healings,'_ the young kami thought with a smile as he reached the dining room and found that Mr. Popo had already set out a plate filled with his favorite fruits. _'He always told me that a namek who had been properly trained should be able to heal any number of people with ease...but then again, he never got to meet a Super Saiyan, much less level three, four, and five Super Saiyans!'_

He took a bite out of a nice, crunchy apple and slumped back in his chair, resting and reliving some found memories of his time under the tutelage of the eldest namek.

ooo

Kanata stood there in the rain looking down at the Arlean's body for a long time, he didn't feel the rain that splashed down on his face, he didn't notice Pan trying to herd the blind hachians into a smaller area so he could transport them to Capsule Corp, he didn't even see Bulma helping Pan and watching him out of the corner of her eye. He just stared at the dead insectoid who was the past version of the creature that had caused him more pain than any other being in the universe. His thoughts were still a jumbled mess, he wanted to hate the Arlean, with all his heart he wanted to hate him, but he couldn't, not really. He might have hated what the Arlean had planned to do, or what he'd presumably had the clones doing to the helpless humans who resembled Pan for the last few weeks, but Kanata couldn't really feel anything but pity for the insectoid who had thrown away his whole life just for a shot at revenge.

Just like Kanata had.

That was the thought that dominated Kanata's mind at the moment. Somewhere in the last ten years he had become that which he sought to destroy. He and the Arlean were the same. Both had lost everything, their friends, their families, even themselves. In their grief they'd taken the same road and now Kanata could see the end of that road: a pointless death with little hope of salvation from the eternal flames of hell. He'd always known that was how it would end, at least the flames of hell part, but until now it hadn't really bothered him. Now…well, he wasn't sure if it bothered him, but it was on his mind and that was definitely a change from the last ten years of his life.

And then there was the voice. The voice that had forced him to spare Akira, the voice that had been ringing in his ears when he stepped in front of the mini-clone's ki blast, the voice that was with him when he looked down at the dying Arlean, the voice that was still there now.

_"No one is beyond salvation Kanata..."_

_"No matter how far we fall, our creator, Jouten, still calls for us in the darkness..."_

Cypress had said those words to him on Llum a few months ago, just before he'd brought the time machine back to Earth's solar system and made the time jump. He'd thought of her words more than once during his trip, but they had never overwhelmed him the way they did now. He wasn't sure what had happened, but at some point during his fight with Akira feelings he'd thought he had long since buried had suddenly resurfaced and those words that he had dismissed as childish fantasy now brought an ache to his heart that he didn't understand.

But he couldn't turn back now, could he? It was one thing to spare Akira, the questions that would have come up had his younger self been slain would have been awkward to say the least, but to spare his enemy? What had he been thinking? Of course, the Arlean was going to die anyway; a few words of kindness at the end didn't mean that he'd given up on his revenge, did it?

After all, technically he did get his revenge. The Arlean was dead and the saiyans were alive, that was revenge, wasn't it? Yes, there was the question of the hachians and the arlean-hybrids some of them carried in their wombs, but perhaps his revenge could include letting the Arlean's children be something their father wasn't...it wasn't the revenge he'd planned, but it was still sort of revenge, right?

Shortly after Pan—his Pan—had died, he'd promised himself that he wouldn't care about the consequences, that bringing her back was the only thing that would matter to him, that he do anything to save her and get his revenge. Now, as he stared down at the dead insectoid, he wasn't so sure that he could really just ignore those consequences the way he'd tried to for over a decade. He wasn't sure if he'd really been as good at turning away from what he once was as he had thought he'd been. And—most frightening of all to him—he wasn't sure if all of the lives he'd taken had really been worth it.

Had he really done all of this just for Pan or had he, deep down, had an ulterior motive? Akira had accused him of being selfish, of not thinking of what Pan would want...and if the idiot was actually right, then all of those people had been killed not for Pan, but for Kanata. His fight to bring back the woman he loved might have become more about him than it was about her. It might have become about punishing himself for his failure, about punishing the universe for the injustice of it all, and about taking out his anger on innocent people because of the excruciating pain he felt every second of everyday since she was stolen from him.

If he stopped this all now, was he betraying his Pan? Was he failing her yet again? He wasn't sure he could really keep going down this path of death and revenge, and yet, he'd already gone so far...was it even possible to stop and try to become what he once was? Was there hope or salvation for one who had fallen so far?

"Kanata?" a soft, warm hand touched his shoulder, finally awakening him from his thoughts.

The saiyan from the future turned and found that Pan had returned.

"Bulma said she called Capsule Corp and has a space set up for our guests. So we're ready whenever you are," she said with the same small smile that his Pan always used when she knew he was troubled or worried about something, but didn't want to pressure him into sharing.

It was one of a million little things that he had spent over ten years longing to see again. It was a smile that told him she loved him. It was a smile that almost...almost made him forget the last words he'd heard from his Pan's mouth:

_"I hate you."_

But he couldn't forget, he would never forget, those words. They, more than anything else, were what pushed him on. They had fueled both the rage and the self-loathing that burned with in him, and now they helped silence Cypress's words.

_"No one is beyond salvation Kanata..."_

_"_**_I hate you."_**

_"No matter how far we fall, our creator, Jouten, still calls for us in the darkness..."_

_"_**_I hate you."_**

He nodded and with one powerful blast, incinerated the body of the Arlean, doing his best to smirk and wish that the stupid bug was still alive when he'd done it. That was the way he was supposed to feel, right? But deep down—so deep that he might not even fully realize the true strength of the feelings that continued to build—he was glad that the insectoid had died a different way.

"Alright, let's do it," Kanata said as he walked with her to the spot where Bulma was watching over the blind female aliens.

He had to push everything from his mind right now and concentrate on the task at hand. He was going to teleport himself and a dozen other people all the way to West Capital and he was going to do it without a powerful life force to lock onto. This was not going to be easy, but he would do it. He would do it perfectly because Pan wanted him to help her and that was all the reason he needed.

The saiyan from the future moved into the middle of the area that the hatchians were crowded and positioned himself so that he was touching as many of them as possible, the rest would have to be touching Pan and Bulma who would in turn hold onto him. He closed his eyes and tried to see his destination and feel the people who were waiting for them there. He didn't actually know the people he was heading towards, or at least couldn't remember the way they felt after ten years, but he would never forget where Capsule Corp was in relation to everywhere else in the world. It wasn't much, but it was enough to point him in the right direction.

In an instant they were gone and the remains of the mountain were silent once again.

ooo

That night Dende once again hosted a marvelous feast for his friends. This time it was a celebratory feast. The future had been altered; they were all going to survive…well, this time at least.

It was time to eat, drink, and be merry!

Almost all of them were there, even Hercule had been invited. The only one who was not sitting at the table was Akira, who was still sound asleep the last time Bulma had checked up on him.

Goten had pointed out that Akira would probably be angry enough to hurt someone if he missed such a fantastic meal, but Dende said that Mr. Popo had saved a large helping for their tired, young friend should he emerge from his slumber in the mood to munch. After that, everyone had been too busy stuffing their faces and simply enjoying each other's company to think too much about the sleeping saiyan.

The only exception was Pan, who spent the entire meal debating whether or not she should go to Akira's room and wake him up so they could talk or let him sleep and talk to him later…or just wait until he came to talk to her, if he ever got around to wanting to do that in the near future. That they needed to have a long serious discussion about their relationship was painfully obvious. She had to let him know that she still loved him and explain that she forgave him and maybe even understood why he had avoided her for almost two straight weeks. Of course, there was also the problem of Kanata, who was looking at her with a contemplative expression on his face while he absentmindedly chewed on the large chicken breast in his hands.

She really hoped that whole mess just wouldn't come up when she finally got to speak with Akira.

o

o

A/N: Haha! An early post! I rule! Well, I would rule...you know...if the requirement for ruling was simply to post a chapter of your dragonballz story a few days early...that _IS_ the requirement for ruling, right? Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter even though very little happened, I just needed to get all this stuff out of the way so the big stuff could happen in the next chapter. Apparently some thought that the last one was the end of the story, but nope! This story never ends! Actually, there are just the obvious and not as obvious loose ends/major battles that need to be dealt with. I got sort of mixed reviews on Kanata's change of heart which is why there's a lot of introspection in Kanata's scene (also because I liked having him more internally torn about his actions than he seemed to be at the end of the last chapter). I know this was a bit Akira-Kanata heavy (a lot of my chapters are), but it had to be. Hopefully there was enough of the rest of the gang to offset the dominance of the OCs. The next chapter should have the conclusion of the love triangle (can it really be a triangle when two of the people are sort of the same person?) and if I'm a good little writer boy, will be out by Saturday or Sunday at the latest. Well, review and let me know what you thought.

Midnight46: Sorry for not answering your question about my age, I forgot to put it in at the end of the last chapter. Anyway, I am currently on my 24th trip around the yellow star located at the center of our solar system (that would make me _almost_ 24...just a few more days actually)...wow, that feels so old...shouldn't I be an adult by now? That's it! I'm throwing out my playstation, deleting Knights of the Old Republic off my PC, and going to work in a cubicle for a large corporation where no one knows my name! Well...maybe not just yet...I'll be an adult tomorrow.

Queen Asinoe: Well, it's pretty hard living with the awesomeness that is me, but somehow I manage. JK As for who was talking to Kanata...well, I think that one will actually just be left up to reader interpretation. It could have been Kanata's own subconscious, it could have been Goku, it could have been Jouten (if you believe in that sort of thing), perhaps it's best if no one (including Kanata) really knows who it was. My finals this time around were pretty easy, so I didn't stress much about them. Usually if I go to class and mostly pay attention (as opposed to say...writing fan fiction) I do pretty well.

Courtney: Yeah, Pan is being a bit fickle, but in her defense, Kanata is Akira…an older, darker Akira, but still Akira, so to her it's got to be hella confusing. I look forward to seeing which chapters were your favorites, I've got a couple that I've particularly enjoyed writing/reading, I wonder if you'll have put the same ones down as your favorites. As for Kanata's decision about the other Arlean...well, you'll see.

Francis Keenan: If Vegeta says that before he destroys the planet then he's even more freaky-cool than I thought (and that's saying something)! It still sounds to me like he's destroying it just because it serves no purpose to him, which is good since it means I won't have to go back and fix any parts of the story.

Toni the Mink: I actually thought about having Tien kill the Arlean, but I figured since I did it before it would be kind of repetitive. The whole Vegeta/Eighteen scene and the one with Master Roshi actually just randomly popped into my head. I think a lot of my best "humor" scenes are like that, I don't plan them, they just sort of appear. Anyway, I'm glad you liked the last chapter better, I think I did too.

Erica: You know what? You're right! They should have checked up on Trunks! What a bunch of jerks! Actually, the problem was that I wrote the scenes out of order and so when I wrote Pan going after Kanata (after checking on Akira), Trunks hadn't collapsed...I'll have to fix that sometime. Maybe I can just have them say, "Oh, I'm sure he's fine seeing as how he's such a big, purple-haired heart-throb and all! A little energy blast couldn't have killed him!"

Geoffrey Oh: They can't die now, that's what last battles are for! ;P I'm glad you liked the chapter.

Brian: Yeah, that's what I was afraid people would think. It did seem fast, but hopefully this chapter made it work a little better. After all, it's not like he was suddenly trying to save the Arlean, he just felt a little bad for the guy and wasn't killing innocent babies. Thanks for the review!

Legend: Your review was actually part of the reason that Kanata has the long thinking scene (the other part being me thinking that the change might have come off as being too much too quick). Hopefully this made the last one work better.

Nova Flame: Sorry if I confused you with the A/N (you weren't the only one apparently), that wasn't even close to the finale of the story! There are still two fairly large loose ends to be tied up as well as one or two smaller ones, so no worries. It'll be really clear when we're at "The End."

donkeykong27: I agree with you that the little speech probably made Kanata's change a bit too fast; hopefully it's a little better now. I'm pretty certain that I'll have to go back and smooth things out in Ch.60 when/if I do my revision. And hey, 90 percent is still an A in most grading systems, I can't complain about that!

Rejhan: I'm glad you liked the last chapter and that you thought Kanata's change made sense, seems like I got about a fifty-fifty response on that. I still think it might have been a bit quick, but that's what I hoped to fix (a little) with Kanata's first scene in this chapter. Anyway, I hope you liked this one too (unfortunately I couldn't think of a good reason to trap Vegeta under any heavy objects this time around).

ashlee: No worries about not reviewing before, the important thing is that you actually did review! Ah, it brings joy to my heart to know that I have more readers than just the handful of people who review every chapter (not that I don't appreciate them, mind you). Anyway, I'm glad that you've liked the story so far, thanks for the review and please feel free to review more (if you want) cause I love hearing from my readers.

TheTiny: Wow, I must have really done a good job to get that reaction out of you. I'm glad you liked the chapter so much; hopefully you'll like the rest as well.


	62. A Night of Important Decisions

**Chapter 62: A Night of Important Decisions**

o

A/N: I started this chapter thinking I knew how I wanted it to sound, but once I started working on it, I realized that writing romance sucks! Anyway, I apologize in advance if this chapter is boring trash, I promise to kill something in chapter 63.

o

Kanata leaned his head back against one of the tall trees and stared up at the stars that sparkled brightly in the night sky above the Lookout, completely lost in thought. Dinner had ended a little over an hour ago and most of the Z Fighters were preparing to turn in for the night, or enjoying each other's company inside the Palace. Kanata had chosen to retreat outside, not really feeling like a member of the group anymore and not wanting to get drawn into a conversation that could lead to questions about where he and Akira had been while Vegeta was fighting the clone.

"The stars are pretty tonight," a soft, pleasant voice said from behind him, a voice that he had both longed for and dreaded since he left the dinner table.

"Your grandmother finally let you out of her sight, huh?" he replied with a smile.

"Yeah…she does tend to over react a little, doesn't she?" Pan sat down next to him and also turned her eyes toward the stars, "I mean it's not like we _actually_ died."

He winced at her words as his brain pulled up the memory of her _actually_ dying.

"Oh damn it…I'm sorry Kanata. That was really dumb," she whispered meekly as soon as she realized her mistake.

"Don't worry about it…" he said waving off her apology.

The two sat in silence for a long time, just enjoying one another's company and the beauty of the night.

ooo

It was dark outside when Akira finally awoke. He still felt plenty tired, but apparently his body wasn't interested in sleeping anymore. A second later, his stomach let out a low grumble, announcing the new number one desire of his body.

The young saiyan quickly climbed out of bed, discarded the dirty, bloody remains of the clothing he'd been wearing and snatched up a new pair of pants and a shirt that had been placed in his room while he slept. Feeling a little cleaner and far more awake than he had in a long, long time, Akira headed downstairs to see what sort of food was left over from dinner.

ooo

"So, it looks like we're all going to survive this time around, huh?" Bra said with a smile.

"Uh, yeah, I guess so," her tan skinned companion replied as he walked with her up to the wing of the palace that Mr. Popo had set up for the Z Fighters the night before.

"Don't sound so excited," Bra laughed.

Uubu managed a small, nervous chuckle and then became quiet again.

Bra didn't try to force anymore conversation on him until they reached her room, but once they were there she turned and faced him somewhat expectantly.

"So, this is where I'm staying," she said almost shyly as a faint blush colored her cheeks.

"Uh…yup," his blush wasn't so faint.

"Are you going back to your village tomorrow?"

"Um…yeah, I guess so."

"What time are you leaving?"

"…I don't know."

"Do you want to spend the night in my room so I can say goodbye in the morning?"

Uubu nearly passed out.

"Oh come on!" the demi-saiyan laughed as she smacked his arm playfully, "I'm just joking! Besides, my dad would kill you, and then we'd have to dispose of your body, and I'd have to explain it all to your brothers and sisters and that would just be awkward."

"Oh…right…"

"Uubu, you don't really think I'm like _that_, do you?" she was actually serious now, a look of concern in her eyes.

"No, of course not," he said as his eyes widened fearfully. "I just…I'm sorry; I guess I've got a lot on my mind."

"Like what?"

If his eyes had been fearful a moment ago, they were now filled with terror, "Nothing important, just…stuff." He began shuffling his feet and his gaze dropped to the floor.

Bra leaned forward a little, "You know you can tell me anything, don't you? I mean, you're one of my best friends, even if we don't get to hang out as much as I'd like us to."

"Really?" he looked up and smiled happily.

"Of course!" she was even closer now.

Uubu's throat sudden felt very tight and the room temperature seemed to have risen several degrees. He swallowed nervously as his own face began to drift towards her.

Bra closed her eyes and then…

"Bra, go to bed," a gruff voice called out from just behind them.

Uubu leapt away from Bra with such speed that he actually put a dent in the wall behind him when he collided with it.

"Hi daddy," Bra said sweetly as she turned to see a very unhappy Vegeta standing in the hallway with his arms crossed and his trademark scowl firmly in place, "I thought you were still down talking with Gohan."

"Obviously," the Saiyan Prince kept his face firm even as his daughter tried to get him to forget about what he had just seen. Somehow Bra had inherited Bulma's ability to always get her way and she used it quite frequently, much to his displeasure, but this time he wouldn't give in. There was no way he was going to let his little princess be sullied by Kakarot's student!

"Um, I better go," Uubu said quietly as he started to hurry to his room, he wanted no part of Vegeta when he went into full protective mode, he'd heard the horror stories of what happened to Bra's first few boyfriends from Akira (who was laughing his head off as he told them).

"No, why don't you stay and chat with me," Vegeta's voice left no room for negotiation.

"Daddy," Bra's voice was equally firm and the Saiyan Prince actually wavered under it. "Uubu's tired, you two can talk in the morning if you want…after me and mom have a little discussion."

Vegeta's scowl deepened, knowing that he was being overpowered by his twenty year old daughter's will, but at the same time, knowing that he didn't have it in his heart to stand against her. "Very well," he growled, staring daggers at the Mystical One who didn't seem to realize that Bra had full control of the situation.

Uubu cowered under Vegeta's withering glare, actually winning himself a few points in the Vegeta's eyes. At least this young warrior knew that he was supposed to be afraid of the Prince of all Saiyans, he just wished that the female members of his family would learn that lesson.

Vegeta gave the young warrior one last look of warning and then stomped back downstairs to complain to Bulma about how unfair it was that his daughter was even allowed to associate with men…men whom Vegeta knew only had one thing on their minds.

"Good night Uubu," Bra said with a smile as she opened her door and headed inside. "Don't leave tomorrow without saying goodbye."

"Uh…" Uubu was still very much shaken by the encounter with Vegeta and whatever it was that had almost—and, were it not for Vegeta, _would_ have—happened between Bra and himself, "O, okay…g, good night."

ooo

"Have you decided what you're going to do next?" Pan asked Kanata, not really wanting to break the comfortable silence that they were sharing, but feeling the need to ask none-the-less.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, are you going to stay with us…or are you going to go back to your own timeline?" Pan looked away from the stars and gave Kanata her full attention.

"I don't know…I don't really have enough fuel to get back right now anyway, but I doubt that'll take Bulma too long to fix. I guess I just hadn't really thought about it." That was sort of a lie, he had given it some thought, but it was always in more of a hypothetical sense.

She was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Do you want to go back?"

Now it was his turn to be silent while he thought. Did he want to go back? The only thing waiting for him there was death, hopefully the Arlean's would come first, but after that he'd really have no reason to go on living. If he stayed here on the other hand…

"I'm not sure there's really anything there for me to go back to," he paused for a moment and then in a harsher voice said, "except for killing the Arlean that stole everyone from me."

The second the words left his lips he realized that they sounded far more blood thirsty than he'd wanted them to. He suddenly wished that Pan would go away or at least change the subject.

Pan was still just looking at him, her eyes held none of the contempt or hatred that he suspected would be there if she ever knew what he really was, but somehow that actually made him feel worse. The love that he could see in her eyes was not aimed at him, at least not the real him.

"Please don't look at me like that," he whispered.

"Like what?"

"That look you're giving me, it's not meant for me."

Pan looked genuinely confused now. "I still don't know what you're talking about. What look?"

Kanata scowled and turned his eyes back to the stars. "You wouldn't look at me that way if you knew who I really was…I'm not a good person, I don't deserve that look anymore than _he_ does."

"You saved all of your friends and family from being wiped out, I'd say that earns you just about any look you want."

"But for the last ten years I've—"

She placed a finger on his lips, silencing his confession before it could come out. "Shhh, it doesn't matter."

Kanata's eyes went wide, "How can it not matter? You don't even know what I've done!"

"I don't need to," Pan replied with a small smile. "I don't love you because of what you have or haven't done…that's not real love. I love you because you are you and to me that's all that matters."

"I'm the one that beat up Akira," he said it so fast he didn't even think about the words before they'd come rushing out of his mouth. As his brain caught up with what was happening, he realized that he was probably throwing away his chance to be with this Pan, but if she didn't love him knowing who he really was then it would never be the love he craved from her. "He didn't want me to kill the Arlean when I found him, so I attacked him…I almost killed him."

Pan absorbed this information silently and then asked, "Why didn't you?"

"Huh?"

"Why didn't you kill him?" she repeated with a small smile.

"I…I don't know. I wanted to, I just…didn't."

"Maybe you're not as bad as you think you are. If you were, you'd have been able to kill him." Still her eyes held none of the anger or hatred Kanata thought should be there, she didn't look happy that he'd beaten up Akira, but she didn't hate him either.

Kanata was quiet again for a few minutes. While he thought about her words, his finger touched the thin scar on his cheek."

"Why do you do that?" Pan asked suddenly, waking him from his thoughts.

"Do what?"

"You always touch that scar when you think, why?"

His finger stopped moving and he pulled it in front of his eyes, examining the traitorous appendage with a sad expression on his face. "I got that scar…the last time I saw my Pan."

The current Pan remained quiet and waited for him to continue.

"I…went to the Great Kai Planet to get King Kai to help me and she was there…"

"She attacked you?"

"Yes…she was angry, she thought that I'd killed her and apparently the clone said something to her before she died…she, she said…" Kanata couldn't bring himself to give voice to those words. He heard them inside his head often enough, he didn't need to say them out loud.

"She said she hated you," Pan supplied for him, reading the answer on his face.

"_I hate you."_

Kanata cringed against the words that hit both his mind and his ears, but he nodded in acknowledgement of the truth.

"I don't know if this will make you feel better or not, but she didn't mean it," Pan said as she stepped closer to the saiyan from the future and wrapped her arms around him, he stiffened, but didn't pull away.

"Yes she did," he replied, "and she should have. I failed her…I failed all of them."

Pan actually smiled, despite the seriousness of the conversation, "I think, of the two of us, I probably know your Pan better than you, since ninety-nine percent of her life is the same as mine. She might have been angry and thought you'd betrayed her, she might have even thought she meant those words when she said them and when she hit you, but I bet she didn't even go three minutes without starting to doubt how much she supposedly hated you and deep down, if she was honest, she would have known that she still loved you more than you can imagine."

"_I hate you."_

Kanata shook his head, still not relaxing into her embrace, "No, she…she…"

"Look," Pan said as she stepped away from the hug and looked Kanata in the eye, "since she and I are basically the same person and since you might not see her for a while so she won't have the chance to say this to your face, let me tell you what I know she would like to say."

The saiyan from the future looked confused, but didn't say anything.

Pan took a deep breath, assumed the role of her future self, and said, "Akira, I love you. Those things I said to you…I'm so sorry. I was angry and scared and hurt and I didn't want you to know it. I'm sorry that I hurt you and I'm sorry that I let you think that I hated you. Don't think about those words anymore…just remember that I love you." She leaned forward and lightly gave him a kiss on the cheek.

Kanata wanted to tell her that this was the silliest, most pointless, cheesiest, dumbest thing she'd ever done or said to him, but for some reason his throat was too tight and his eyes too teared up to say anything. He just reached out, pulled her to him, and held her.

ooo

Akira had eaten all of the leftovers from dinner and was now feeling sleepy again, but he didn't want to go to bed until he'd at least seen Pan once. The last time he'd seen her she was about to be hit by two powerful ki beams and then he and Kanata had stepped in, since that time he'd been told that she was fine, but he hadn't seen her and confirmed it with his own eyes the way he wanted to.

Perhaps he just wanted to see her and the making sure she was okay was just an excuse.

He stepped outside and stopped dead in his tracks…again. His promise from earlier in the day vanished without a trace as jealously once again reared its ugly head.

There was Pan and Kanata, hugging each other in an obviously loving embrace. The saiyan from the future had his face buried in the crook of Pan's neck and his arms wrapped around her waist. Pan had one hand on his head and the other on his back, holding him close as if she was afraid he might try to leave.

It was about this point that Akira realized that making the promise and following through on it were two entirely different things. He didn't want just be her friend, he didn't want to be happy for her and Kanata...he didn't even want to _pretend_ to be happy for her and Kanata.

His hands balled up into fists and he almost considered starting round two of his fight with his older self at that moment, but then his brain reclaimed control of his body and he let out a long, ragged breath. She'd made her choice…he wouldn't, couldn't, be happy about it, but he wasn't going to start a fight…at least not yet.

He turned, opened the door—gently this time—and started to go back inside.

"Akira?" Pan's voice made him pause mid step, but it was only a momentary pause and then he was once again walking away.

ooo

Kanata watched sadly as Pan ran after Akira. He wanted to ask her to stop, to just let the moron go, but deep down he knew she would go after the young man anyway. She was about to make her choice and as much as he wished that she would choose him, he didn't think it was going to happen.

And if she choose Akira, there would be only one course left for Kanata to take.

ooo

"Akira, wait!" Pan said as she caught up with him in the hallway and stepped in front of him.

He tried to walk past her, to ignore her, maybe even to make her feel some of the hurt that he had felt since seeing her in the arms of Kanata, but before he'd taken two steps she grabbed him roughly by the arm, spun him around and slammed him into the nearest wall creating a good sized dent in the process.

"No, no more," she growled, "you're not running away this time."

"I'm not running away," he replied in an angry voice.

"Then you'll tell me what your problem is."

"You should know. You're the one that did it."

""What did I do?" she yelled, throwing her hands in the air in frustration, her voice was both pleading and angry at the same time. "What is this horrible wrong that you think I committed?"

Akira's cheek twitched slightly as his eyes seemed to fill with rage. "How can you ask that?" he demanded, stepping away from the wall and making a move to pass her again. She reached out and grabbed him, but this time he was through playing games, she could no more stop him than she could her father or Vegeta. She pulled at his arm with all of her strength and he continued walking as though she wasn't even there, dragging her along with him.

Finally she released his arm and bowed her head in defeat. "Please," she whispered so quietly that it was doubtful he could even hear her, but he did and the sound of her voice brought him to a screeching halt. "Please, just tell me what I did...I really don't know..."

Her words brought the twisted memory of her betrayal back to his mind and with it most of his anger. "You kissed him," he hissed, "You kissed that lying bastard."

She looked up in shock, "I haven't kissed anyone besides y...well, I guess I kissed Kanata on the cheek and he kissed me when we first met him, but...that can't be what's got you acting like this. I mean, I kiss Trunks on the cheek all the time and you've never cared about it."

"What about last night?"

"Last night?" she asked in semi-confusion, doing her best to hide the dread that suddenly filled her. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't lie to me, I know what I saw," he could read her as well as anyone and he'd seen the tiny shift of her eyes, the shift that confirmed everything to him.

"Obviously you don't, because I didn't kiss Kanata last night," Pan shot back, putting her hands on her hips to keep them from shaking.

Akira stared at her for a moment, how could she look him in the eye like this and lie? She had never done that before, was his future self's influence so corrupting that after just a little over a day he had already turned her into such a dishonorable woman? No, he couldn't believe that, but he also couldn't deny what he'd seen...could he?

His mind turned back to the painful memory and examined it. It didn't seem quite right for some reason. As he continued his internal examination, a new (or perhaps old) memory of Pan and Kanata standing out under the stars as their faces drifted closer together. It took him a moment to realize that this was the true memory, the way things had actually happened. His sleep deprived mind had added twisted nightmares to the original. Not that this was much better. Instead of a kiss all he had really seen was a prelude to a kiss, not exactly an exonerating piece of evidence.

"Maybe you didn't kiss him," he conceded softly, his anger was dissipating and being replaced with pain and sadness, "but you were going to."

"I..." she wanted to deny it, to tell him that he was wrong about that too, but she couldn't. She couldn't lie to him. She stopped and took a deep breath, "Do you love me?"

It wasn't what she had meant to say, in fact, she wasn't sure what she was going to say, but whatever it was it wasn't that. She had simply opened her mouth and those were the words that came out.

He looked taken aback by the question. "Of course I love you," he whispered, "I...why would you even ask that?"

She was quiet for a moment as she tried to find the answer to his question. Finally, instead of answering him, a second question sprang unbidden from her mouth, "Do you know that I love you?"

He hesitated for a moment and then said, "Yeah, but—"

"No," Pan's conscious brain had caught up with her subconscious by this point and she knew what she needed to say, or at least what she thought she needed to say. "Don't say 'but,' I love you. That's all that you should need to know. I would never betray you because I love you."

"Then what was going on last night?" his anger and frustration had dissipated a little, but there was still a hint of fear and uncertainty in his voice. "It looked like you were going to kiss him."

She took a second deep breath and said, "If you hadn't come, I might have..."

Akira's brief moment of hope crumbled around him as her words registered in his mind. Up until this point he'd been slowly forced to question the assumptions he'd been making about Pan and Kanata's relationship, but now she'd just confirmed them all.

Pan could see the pain that flashed across his face and it broke her heart to be the one that had caused it, but she had to make sure that he understood. "...but it wouldn't have been because I don't love you, it would have been because I _DO_ love you."

"Well, that's definitely a different excuse…maybe you should have just told me you were drunk or something and that it didn't mean anything," Akira said with a scowl as the anger returned. "You'd kiss another man because you love me? How is that love?"

"Of course it meant something, how could it not. Don't you get it? He's not another man! Whether you like it or not, he's you."

"Stop saying that! He's not me!"

"But he is you! He might have lived a different life than you will, but he is you. He is the you that you would have become if he hadn't come back and saved us."

Akira tried to shut out her words; he refused to believe that he ever could have become a monster like Kanata. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong, to argue that it wasn't fair to say that those were the choices he would have made just because they were the choices that Kanata made, but he never got the chance to try to make his argument.

"When I look at him, I see you," Pan whispered. Akira looked up at her in shock, those were words he definitely never wanted to hear, but again, before he could try to tell her she was mistaken, she continued, "I can't help wanting to make him feel better because I can't stand to see you in pain and when I see him in pain, I see you in pain."

He wasn't sure what this discussion was anymore, but it didn't seem like the fight it had started out as. Whatever it was, he was clearly losing. All of his arguments seemed to fall flat in the face of her declaration of love. She told him that she loved him and not just him, but even Kanata, the twisted, evil future version of himself.

How was he supposed to remain mad at her when she said things like that? What was he even supposed to say to that? Was he supposed to be happy that she loved Kanata? He wasn't. Akira didn't want her to like his future self because he hated the man, but maybe the fact that she loved both of him spoke about how deep her love went. The fact that she could look past the man that he could have become, could see in Kanata the man that he was deep down, the man that she loved, maybe that attested to something deeper than the superficial love that was tossed around so easily by their peers.

Akira had been silent for a long time while he considered these thoughts, but once they had run their course he looked into her eyes and whispered, "Kanata...he's...I would have done terrible things...he told me some of the things he did...he's not a good person, maybe I wouldn't have been a good person..."

"I know," she replied. "I don't know what he did, and I don't want to, but I know that he did something terrible, something that he thinks will keep him from seeing his Pan in the after life."

"And you still love him?"

"I still love you and I love the you that I see in him."

Akira bowed his head in shame, not shame for anything he had done, but shame for what he apparently would have done. He didn't deserve a woman like Pan, a woman who could see the good in a vile man like Kanata...like Akira. For the second time in just a few minutes he was completely at a loss of words.

The two young saiyans stood in the hallway, each wondering what more could be said and neither sure who should speak first.

Finally Akira broke the silence. "I'm sorry," he whispered, "I'm sorry I doubted you."

"Well," a tiny smirk appeared on Pan's face, "you should be...jerk."

If he realized she was joking, his face didn't show it, "I was a jerk...still am. I don't deserve you."

"Maybe not," she replied, still lightly teasing him, "but you got me anyway."

Whether he had a good response to that or not, neither would ever know as Pan leaned up and into him and captured his lips in a soft, loving kiss that seemed to wash away all the hurt and fear that he'd been feeling for the last twenty-four hours.

After a moment they broke apart and stared into each other's eyes and Pan saw what she had been wanting to see in _her_ Akira since the first time his future self had looked at her. It wasn't as intense, he hadn't spent ten years grieving for her and wallowing in a personal hell he built for himself, but some of the way Kanata looked at her had crept into Akira's eyes. She could see, without a doubt, that there was nothing in all of creation as precious to him as she was. It was also way more than a tenth of the intensity that Kanata's eyes had and she could feel herself flush as he continued to gaze at her.

"I love you."

Which of them said it? They weren't sure. It didn't really matter anymore, whoever spoke was only giving voice to a thought they shared.

And then Akira lifted her off her feet and held her close as he kissed her with a hungry urgency that had not been in the first kiss, trying to tell her through his lips just how deeply he loved her and she tried to say "me too." The world around them disappeared and all they knew was each other.

ooo

Kanata floated up to a window, peered in, spotted the reconciled couple, and then dropped back to the ground. He couldn't really say that he was surprised, after all, he was practically a stranger to her now, but he wished that things had worked out differently.

At least this way he wouldn't always wonder if he was somehow betraying his Pan by being with her younger version.

Pan's choice, predestined though it may have been, also meant something else: Kanata would return to his timeline. There was nothing for him here. Pan was taken, the Arlean was dead, and the past versions of his loved ones were all safe. There was little left for him here, he might as well return to his own timeline and finish things once and for all.

o

o

A/N: Bleh, I don't know about you, but a lot of this chapter was way too cheesy for me...I guess some people can write romance (like people who aren't me) and so can't (like the person who is me). Oh well, I gave it my best shot and it probably could have been worse. The whole Bra-Uubu thing sort of came out of nowhere. I just wanted to have someone besides Pan and her two love prospects in there somewhere and that was what came out. Anyway, I know this chapter is almost a week later than I initially thought it would be (I guess I don't rule anymore…damn!), but this romance stuff is hard to write so it takes longer as well. Hopefully, despite the excessive fluff, it was bearable at least. The next chapter should be better as Akira and Kanata get to have a little talk and maybe a small (probably bloody) adventure. Alright, fill out a review and let me know what you thought.

anouk: What nameks can or will eat is a bit of a mystery in dbz. After reading your review I remembered hearing something like that as well, but couldn't figure out if it had come from the anime/manga or was just something I'd read in a fanfic, so I did some research! Okay, first off, Dende clearly says that nameks only drink water during the Namek/Frieza saga. So from that bit of dialog, you're right. However earlier in the show, Kami tells Mr. Popo that during his childhood he had difficulty finding things that he could eat in the Yazbitt Heights (found that little tidbit at Also, during the Android Saga, in the episode where Goku and Piccolo go to driver's ED, Gohan catches a large fish and asks Goku if they can have it for dinner. Then Piccolo complains (in an inner monolog) that they've (he says "we" so he's included) been having fish all week. And lastly, in Dragonball, Demon king Piccolo's assistant tells a human chief what his master likes to eat (stewed meats, pudding, etc). So I suppose a fix for that would be to say that nameks on Earth actually eat, while those who are on the planet Namek just drink water...or maybe I should just go back and give Dende a large glass of water, it's less confusing that way.

George Oh: I agree with you about Akira's hasty thoughts on being Pan's friend, but as you can see, there's a difference between deciding you're just going to accept your (ex)girlfriend's decision to be with someone else and actually going through with it. I guess I maybe I still should have had some more conflict there, but I knew Akira wasn't going to be pleased the next time he saw them together so it didn't really seem necessary.

BballAnimeLover89 (a.k.a Erica): Wow, that's a pretty big change in name! I certainly hope that 'Bball' refers to basketball and not boring ol' baseball (no offense if you like it, but to me watching baseball, especially on TV, is just one step up from watching paint dry... barely). I'm glad you liked my response; maybe I'll actually work something along those lines into the story (I'm sure his fiancé would be more than happy to tell him something like that).

Everyone Else: Thanks for the reviews, I'm glad that despite the fact that nothing really happened, all of the reviews were positive for the last chapter (I guess I did a good job then). Hopefully most of you liked this one as well.


	63. Righting the Wrongs of the Past Part I

**Chapter 63: Righting the Wrongs of the Past Part I**

o

Even before he opened his eyes the next morning, Akira's brain had already alerted him to the fact that he was not alone in his bed. This, quite naturally, struck him as odd since he'd never woken up with company in bed before, excluding the times Bra and Bulma had jumped on his bed to wake him up on the weekends or the morning after a particularly brutal training session with Vegeta. The young saiyan's eyes opened ever so slightly and two additional pieces of information were added to the puzzle. First, his arm was pinned under the beautiful dark haired woman who was still sleeping next to him and second, his was not actually _in_ _his_ bed. He was in hers.

Akira's eyes snapped wide open and his brain began quickly scanning through his memories of the previous night.

They hadn't done _that_...had they?

_"Stay with me," Pan asked softly, as she momentarily pulled away from Akira's lips. The two were standing at the door to her room and had been there for the last ten minutes._

_"Well, if you insist," Akira replied with a grin and then leaned in to kiss her some more._

_Pan turned the door knob with the hand that wasn't wrapped around her boyfriend's neck and the two young saiyans stumbled into her room. They giggled giddily as they nearly fell, but still did not break their kiss._

_Over the course of the next several minutes they slowly made their way across the room and eventually reached the bed. Suddenly Akira, who had been completely lost in the euphoria of "make up" making out, became nervous and stepped away from Pan as she sat down on the bed and looked up at him._

_"Um...maybe this isn't the best idea," he whispered as every instinct in his body threatened to kick his ass for saying something so stupid, "I mean..."_

_He never got to finish as Pan reached up, grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him down into bed with her. Whatever switch in Akira's head was responsible for cognitive thought was once again turned off as a strange, but pleasant, buzzed feeling seemed to swallow his brain, leaving him at the mercy of his hormones...or Pan's hormones for that matter._

_As the kissing continued, Akira's hand--apparently of its own volition--slipped under Pan's shirt and gently slid across the bare skin of her stomach and side. Akira's lips had just begun to work their way along Pan's neck when his fingers brushed against the bottom of her bra._

_The buzzing in his brain vanished in an instant as sobering fear shot through his body. "Oh kami, I'm sorry," he said as the offending hand returned to its rightful place outside of her clothing and he sat up. "I just...I...I'm sorry..."_

_Pan, for her part, didn't look angry or offended. "It's not a big deal Akira," she whispered softly as she sat up next to him and kissed one of his bright red cheeks, "I don't mind."_

_If it was possible, Akira's face became even more red. "What do you mean you don't mind?"_

_"I mean, I love you and I want to make you happy anyway I can."_

_Akira didn't have a whole lot of experience with the intricicies of the strange language that women seemed to be speaking at times like this, but even he knew what Pan was implying._

_"Really?" he asked quietly, doing his best to control the trembling of his voice and failing horribly in the attempt._

_Pan gave him a small smile and nodded, but even in the slightly darkened room he caught the tiny flicker of doubt in her eyes._

_An unbidden, but not completely unwelcome, memory flashed into his mind of her telling him that she thought she would like to save sex for marriage, something about only wanting to make love to her husband and no one else. As much as his raging hormones were going to hate him for it, he knew what he had to do._

_"I love you," he told her with a smile and a gentle kiss and then he laid down next to where she was sitting and seemed to ready himself to go to sleep._

_Pan watched him in confusion for a moment, unsure of what he was doing. Wasn't this the part where the passionate kissing was supposed to begin (again) and the clothes were supposed to start disappearing? Apparently Akira didn't watch the same movies as Zori and Stacy, because he certainly wasn't following the examples her friends watched on movie night._

_And then he reached up and pulled her down so that her head was against his chest._

_"There will be plenty of time for that when you're my wife," he whispered. "For now, this is enough for me." A few minutes later, he was asleep._

Akira let out a deep sigh of relief, happy that he didn't have something of that magnatude hanging over his head in addition to all the other craziness that was going on in his life, but still felt just the teensiest bit disappointed bout the missed opportunity. After all, he was a guy and a saiyan guy at that...it wasn't like he didn't have urges.

And speaking of urges...he was starving!

Careful not to wake Pan, Akira slipped out of bed and headed downstairs to see if he could track down some breakfast.

ooo

A cloud of anger still surrounded Vegeta as he awoke early the next morning. His first instinct was to head downstairs and take out some of his frustration on whatever breakfast food had been set out for the Z Fighters, but then he realized that there was something much more stress relieving laying next to him in bed.

"Did you know about this, woman?" he growled.

"Huh?" Bulma mumbled as she opened one eye, looked up at her husband and then tried to go back to sleep.

Vegeta would have none of it. "Did you know that our daughter has been associating with Kakarot's student?"

"Vegeta, it's early. Let's fight later, okay?" Bulma rolled over and tried to shut out the Saiyan Prince's rantings.

"She offered to let him stay in her room!" Vegeta obviously wanted to fight now. "To think that the Princess of the saiyan race would let herself be...be...sullied by that rifraf..." his voice trailed off as the injustice of it all robbed him of his ability to speak.

Bulma groaned and sat up, a scowl of annoyance firmly planted on her face. "I don't know what you're talking about, but Uubu is a nice boy. He and Bra have been friends for a while now, if they want to date, it's not that big of a deal."

"He doesn't want to date her, believe me, I know what men his age want and 'dating' isn't it! He just wants to defile her!" Veins were now popping out of Vegeta's forehead and neck as he worked himself into a good, rage-filled rant.

"She's _twenty_, Vegeta, not thirteen. She can make her own decisions."

Vegeta crossed his arms and huffed in annoyance. "She may be twenty, but she's also my daughter, I won't have her behaving in such a manner. She was going to let him spend the night in her room!"

"This is Bra we're talking about, it was probably just a joke to mess with Uubu's head," Bulma reassured, "but even if it wasn't..."

"No, I will not have her acting like some sort of...of whore!"

"You didn't exactly complain when we spent our first night together..." suddenly Bulma's voice became hard as steel, "or was I acting like a _whore_?"

Vegeta's rant came to an instant halt as he realized he had strayed into dangerous waters. Not that Bulma could really hurt him or anything, whenever she took a swing at him he actually had to soften the blow so she didn't hurt herself instead, but there were other ways to hurt a man and he didn't even want to think about what life would be like if she decided to force him to cook for himself or refused to let him sleep with her...or even (oh it was too horrible to even mention)...refused to fix the gravity room for him!

"That was different," he mumbled, not wanting to lose the argument, but not wanting to lose the _perks_ that came with being married to Bulma.

A smile tugged at the aqua haired woman's lips, she'd won and she knew it, but she did her best to keep her stern face in place. "It was not different."

Vegeta's hands clenched into fists, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew he should have just gone downstairs instead of picking the fight with his wife.

Bulma finally let her lips curl into a smile and then leaned over and nibbled on the brooding saiyan's ear lob. "Come on," she whispered softly, "I'll give you something else to think about." Vegeta resisted for all of five seconds…at least she was giving him a new way to work out some of his frustration.

The two did not leave their bed for several hours.

ooo

Kanata was sitting at the breakfast table, but not eating when Akira came down. The younger saiyan had no idea where everyone else was, but it seemed that he and his double were the only ones up at the moment.

"You're the first one down," Kanata said as though reading his younger self's mind, "except for Mr. Popo, but I don't think he actually sleeps anyway."

"Wouldn't you be the first one down then?" Akira asked, all the while watching his older self wearily and preparing for the attack that he assumed would be coming soon.

"I…had a lot on my mind last night; I didn't ever go to bed." Kanata replied. "Now, eat up. We have a busy day ahead of us."

"What do you mean by that?" Akira asked as he sat down and began sampling a wide range of fruits and breakfast pastries that had been set out on the table, the whole time his eyes never strayed from Kanata.

"You don't need to watch me, I'm not going to attack you," the older saiyan said with a smirk.

Akira forced some half chewed food down his throat and then said, "You'll excuse me if I don't take your word for it."

"Believe me, if I could kill you, you'd be dead right now."

"And why can't you?"

"It's certainly not from a lack of desire...I just can't," Kanata said and then he bit viciously into an apple and chewed it thoughtfully.

Akira was also quiet for a moment and then he asked, "So what are we doing today?"

Kanata smiled, "_I _am going to do what I set out to do in my timeline: make the universe the way it should be. _You_ are going to see where you'd be without Pan so you don't ever make the mistake of keeping things from her. And _we_ are going to make sure that my last wish wasn't wasted."

Akira cocked an eyebrow in confusion, but Kanata, who had finished his apple and was quickly making a large stack of pancakes disappear, apparently wasn't interested in elaborating. With no choice but to wait and see what his older self had planned for him, Akira also turned his attention to the food before him and began shoveling it into his mouth.

ooo

Kumo was nice and warm, but not completely comfortable. The little boy twisted to the side and felt something push against his feet; instinctively he gave the object a kick. Whatever it was shifted away from his feet and groaned, but the kick had moved Kumo enough so that his head was now up against something else. Again he pushed and wiggled, trying to get himself a little more space in his nice warm bed, once he felt that he had sufficient space for his needs, he curled up into a small ball in the middle of the bed.

For the next few minutes life was good for the two and a half year old, but then he once again grew restless. He spun a bit and stretched out his legs, his bare feet hit a firm, strangely shaped object and he gave it an extra kick to move it out of his way.

"Ugh, cut it out Kumo," Goten groaned as he pushed his son's foot out of his face.

Kumo either didn't hear or just didn't care; he kicked his father in the head again.

"Fine, fine," Goten rolled over and promptly fell out of bed with a thud. A moment later his gentle snores could be heard from the ground.

Kumo's next target was sleeping to his left; he pushed against that object for a few minutes until it too was knocked out of the bed.

"Wha?" Valese mumbled groggily as she woke up on the ground. She looked around for a moment and then, rather than getting back into bed with the squirming toddler; she walked to the other side of the bed and curled up against Goten. Soon, the two adults where asleep on the floor while their two and a half year old little boy had the king sized bed all to himself.

Five minutes later, Kumo began feeling a little chilly without the warmth of his parents on either side of him; he sat up and looked around in confusion. As soon as he spotted his parents sleeping on the floor, he climbed out of bed, curled up next to them, and fell asleep with a contented smile on his face.

ooo

When they were done with breakfast, Kanata signaled for Akira to follow him outside. The younger man still didn't trust his future self, but his curiosity over the last wish and why Kanata had made it got the better of him. As soon as they were outside Kanata put his hand on Akira's shoulder and the two of them vanished.

ooo

King Kai was happily washing his pride and joy: a cherry red 1956 Chevy Coupe Convertible. It was his second such car, the first having been destroyed by the explosion of Cell, and he would be damned if anything ever happened to this one. It was just too difficult to get them delivered so far away.

"Why do you even have that?" Piccolo asked without opening his eyes. He was—as always—hovering in the lotus position under a nearby tree, enjoying his daily meditation. "It's not like you can drive it anywhere."

King Kai began wiping the water off the car, pleased with the sight of his face being reflected back at him. "It's a classic," he explained patiently, "I don't need to drive it to enjoy it!"

Suddenly four feet appeared on top of the hood, right where King Kai had just finished cleaning.

"Hi King Kai!" Akira said cheerfully as he and Kanata hopped off the car.

The kai couldn't respond, he was too busy staring in horror at the small scratches that had been left on the hood by the two saiyans.

"Uh, are you okay?" Akira asked when he noticed King Kai's mouth hanging open.

"Y, you...how could...you...my, my baby!" the kai put his head down on the car and wept.

"Oooookay," the younger of the two saiyans turned away from the sobbing martial arts master and smiled at his friend, "Hi Piccolo."

"What are you two up to?" the namek asked in his usual baratone voice that always seemed to have at least a hint of annoyance or anger until you learned how to read him.

Akira shrugged, "Kanata's taking me on a little trip, but he won't say where to."

Piccolo and Akira both turned and looked expectantly at Kanata who gave them a smirk (it could probably even have been called a slightly _evil_ smirk).

"We're going to fix a few things before I head back to my timeline," the saiyan from the future said cryptically.

"So what does that have to do with you two coming here?" King Kai asked in annoyance haing finally recovered from the shock he got at the sight of his beautiful car being marred by the two unthinking saiyans.

"I need your help finding a few people," Kanata was all business now. "I can find Heata by myself, but since I don't know where his little minions are going to be at I'm going to have trouble finding them and I want to make sure we get as many as possible."

Akira and Piccolo glanced at each other in confusion, neither having any idea who this 'Heata' was.

If King Kai shared in their confusion, he didn't show it. "Why do you want to find them?"

"If you know who and what they are, it should be obvious," Kanata replied.

"They aren't exactly in my jurisdiction, but there are some people that we kais keep an eye on no matter where they live, but that still doesn't explain what you want with them."

Kanata looked over his shoulder at Akira and Piccolo and then turned back to King Kai, "How about I show you?" He stepped forward and lowered his head.

King Kai didn't need to actually touch the young man to read his mind, but physical contact always made the connection that much stronger. He reached out and placed his hand gently on the saiyan from the future's shoulder and images flooded into his mind.

ooo

Pan's eyes slowly fluttered open as the morning sunlight filtered in through the bedroom window. Her bed was so soft, the blankets nice and warm, and the pillow smelled of Akira...who was no longer in bed.

The dark haired girl sat up and looked around. He'd done it again!

Why was it that every time she fell asleep with him next to her he was gone by the time she woke up? Admitidly, she had only let him sleep in her bed twice, but he'd still run out both times before she woke up. Just once she wanted to find him next to her when her eyes first opened in the morning.

She stretched, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and then changed clothes so she could go get some breakfast, hoping that Akira had at least waited for her downstairs.

As she stepped through her door she nearly ran right into her father and mother and grandmother who also looked like they had just gotten up. Suddenly Pan was incredibly glad that Akira had chosen to be an early riser this morning, this meeting with her parents would have been really awkward if Akira was with her.

Chi-Chi gave her granddaughter a strange look and then a sly smile spread across her face as she thought she saw some guilt in Pan's eyes that the young woman was trying to hide. "Good morning dear, did you _sleep_ well?"

It was, of course, just a stab in the dark at whatever it was Pan was feeling guilty about, but the dark haired girl didn't know that.

Pan's eyes narrowed slightly even as her cheeks began to burn. Either her grandmother had been spying on her and Akira or else Chi-Chi had some sort of freaky sixth sense about these sorts of things. "Just fine grandma, thank you," she replied as calmly as possible, if her dad found out that Akira had spent the night in her room—even if nothing happened—there'd be hell to pay.

"Where's Akira?" Videl had picked up on what was happening as well. "He still looked pretty tired last night; did he get any sleep?"

"Er...yeah, I mean...I guess he did. I…uh, I haven't seen him yet this morning," Pan was wishing the palace floor would open up and swallow her.

"Well, we'd better hurry up and get downstairs while there's still a chance of getting some breakfast," Gohan said pleasantly, completely oblivious to the teasing his daughter was receiving at the hands of her merciless mother and grandmother.

ooo

_Akira, now called Kanata, stepped out of his space pod and looked around, a warm, misty rain was surrounded him as it did everything else on Hayashi, making it difficult to see. In the distance he could just make out the white pristine spirals of the capital city towering over the beautiful rainforest that covered most of the land on the green planet. The young saiyan's nose was filled with the wonderful fruity aroma of the plants and flowers all around him and he sighed contentedly, this place was a paradise!_

_"Alright, we only have a day to wipe out every last one of this planet's tree hugging people," a gravelly voice called out from with in the mist, Kanata recognized the voice as that of Captain Buke, the leader of the purging crew he'd been placed on. "Given they're all a bunch of peace loving sissies, it had better not take us half that time. You all know your assignments, get to it. Newbie, you're with me!"_

_'Newbie' was the pet name Kanata had been given by his teammates; personally Kanata didn't care what they called him as long as Heata started paying him soon. _

_"Yes sir," the saiyan sighed, still not feeling completely sure about his choice to join up with the changeling's little army, but he had promised that he would do anything to bring back Pan and he meant it._

_The two floated up into the air and for the next few minutes, Buke explained how to use the scouter, the different techniques he employed in destroying the helpless populations of planets, and a bunch of other boring things that Kanata had difficulty focusing on. All around him he could feel it as the Hayashians died at the hands of those he had agreed to work for._

_Kanata wanted to be sick._

_It was one thing to kill someone who was a murderer or even a shop owner who had wanted to sell him to Heata, it was quite another to slaughter thousands just to make a buck, but that was exactly what Kanata was now expected to do._

_"You got it?" Buke asked and without thinking Kanata nodded. "Good, we'll take that little town over there, I'll just watch and you show me what you've got. If you prove to me that you're as good at killing things as Heata claims you are, I'll move on to another part of the planet and let you have at it on your own. Understand?"_

_Again Kanata nodded on autopilot as he watched as the beautiful city in front of him was slowly reduced to dust by one of his teammates._

_Buke led him to a relatively small town not too far away and dropped down next to what looked like some sort of religious building._

_"Show me what you got, newbie."_

_Kanata's hand trembled slightly as he pointed it at the building inside of which he could feel at least a dozen different life forces. For a moment he didn't think he could go through with it, but then a picture of Pan's broken body flashed before his eyes and his face hardened._

_He wasn't going to fail again._

_"Ha!" a blue beam of energy shot from his palm and the building exploded._

_Terrified hayashians scattered as they realized that they were under attack, Kanata coolly took out one after the other as the ran from him._

_"Nice," Buke whistled in admiration, "but let's pick up the pace a little, we don't have to actually leave this place intact, the buyers can set up their own buildings."_

_The saiyan nodded and lifted his hand in the air as a large ball of ki began to form above him. Just as he was about to let it fly and small form ran into his leg._

_"You big meany!" a bald, red-skinned child yelled shrilly, "Leave us alone!"_

_Kanata glanced down at his assailant. 'I'm sorry kid, but this is something that I have to do,' he whispered in his mind. On the outside, his lips pulled back in a feral sneer, "Goodbye brat." With his free hand he fired a ki beam directly into the child's face, splitting her head open and splattering the remains of her cooked brain on the ground. Then he launched the large ki ball and shot into the air as the town simply vanished under the incredible power of the attack._

_"Haha," Buke chuckled, "Heata was right. You're a fucking killing machine! A natural!"_

_He missed the pained expression that flashed across the young man's face and then disappeared as if it had never been there._

_"Alright, you head towards section A12 and just start killing anything that moves…and if you want to have a little fun on the side, if you know what I mean, knock yourself out. When your done, radio in and I'll tell you what's left," he started to head in the opposite direction and then paused, "Have fun Kanata."_

_The second he was gone, the young saiyan threw up._

_When his stomach was empty he did as he had been ordered. By the time it was all done, Kanata had taken nearly seven thousand innocent lives; each kill was easier than the one before it._

More images flowed through King Kai's mind as he observed with growing horror the truth of what Akira could have become as well as every gory detail of Heata's empire expanding with the help of the disillusioned young saiyan.

_Kanata had finished clearing his section of the large city on Vrugia Prime and was now casually strolling through the streets as if he didn't have a care in the word. The smoke from burning buildings billowed into the sky above and the streets had turned green with the blood of it now-deceased residents, everywhere he looked dead bodies lay strewn about, it was almost surreal._

_A terrified scream suddenly pierced the strange silence that had engulfed the ruins of the city. Kanata took off running in the direction it had come from without thinking, even after four years of purging planets, his first instinct was always to help those in need. He burst into a large, and surprisingly intact building and stopped dead in his tracks._

_"Hey Kanata," the blue skinned Buke said with a grin as he glanced up from the dark haired woman he was raping._

_Kanata's eyes narrowed as they traveled from his captain, who was unashamedly standing with his pants down and his arm pinning the helpless, naked woman to a table, to the dark haired woman with olive green skin and purple eyes._

_"Please...help me," she whimpered as Buke roughly had his way with her._

_In Kanata's eyes he no longer saw the vrugian woman. He saw Pan, lying in a pool of her own blood in the abandoned warehouse he had found her body in. His jaw clenched in pure rage as his eyes returned to his captain._

_"Hey, these bitches are a good lay. If you want, you can have the next turn with her," Buke said with a sadistic smile as he turned back to the woman._

_The next thing Kanata knew, there was a loud ripping noise as his fingers pushed through Buke's armor, into his skin, grabbed hold of his spinal column, and tore it from his body. The blue skinned alien's eyes went wide in surprise and a brief second of pain, somehow he managed to turn towards the enraged saiyan as he fell to the ground. Buke's mouth moved slightly, trying to say something, but there was no longer a spinal cord relaying messages to the rest of his body so all he could do was stare up at Kanata and wait to bleed to death._

_Kanata looked down at his blood covered body and hands and then at the twitching spinal cord he was still holding. For a moment he seemed confused, but then he glanced down at his soon to be ex-captain and smirked. His hand tightened around the spinal cord and then he raised it above his head and brought it down hard on the dying alien over and over and over._

_"Kanata! What the fuck are you doing?" a loud voice called out._

_The saiyan awoke from his daze and looked down at the remains of his former captain. Buke's face and a good portion of his upper body had been turned into paste under the force of Kanata's blows. He dropped the spinal cord and turned to see the rest of his crew as well as the second crew that had been assigned to help them. There were too many to kill without raising suspicions, this might have been a 'tough' job, but the higher ups would be expecting more than one person to return out of the two crews they'd sent._

_"Thank you," the dark haired woman whispered, breaking the silent staring contest between the blood-covered Kanata and the eight other people who were crowded in the room._

_The saiyan glanced at her and then lift his hand and blew her away with a ki blast before allowing the captain of the second team to lead him back to the space pods._

Many more scenes from Kanata's life flashed through the kai's mind, but they were really unnecessary, he'd already decided that he would help the saiyan eliminate the new changeling threat. Now it was just a matter of figuring a way around the multiple rules that forbid him from interfering with the living world.

o

o

A/N: Well, there you have it. A couple of killings (or at least memories of killings), Vegeta got some, and Pan didn't. All is right in the world, ya? Obviously given how this chapter ends, the next one will have some more violence and wrap up the last of the loose ends in this timeline (I hope). Which I guess means that this story is slowly nearing the end! Yay! Anyway, the car that King Kai is cleaning actually looks a lot like the car he has in the anime. I had to search for a while before I found just the right one, but if you find a picture of it, you'll see that they look really similar. Now then, please review and let me know what you thought.

Geoffery Oh: Well, I don't know if this chapter gets me back to ruling (or if I was ever there to begin with), but hopefully you liked it. I personally was relieved to get back to having saiyans beating the tar out of innocent children and bad guys once again.

Courtney: You don't think Vegeta would be an overprotective father? I don't know, I suspect that Bra would be daddy's little princess and would get anything she wanted (how else can one explain the fact that she doesn't seem to train at all in GT, she probably just pouted for a few seconds, kissed him on the cheek and he gave in). I'm glad that you liked the last chapter even if it was...whatever it was. I don't know if I was selling myself short or not, I just don't feel as confident when it comes to writing romantic emotions...especially if I'm trying to get into the head of a girl when I do it because that's just scary! Anyway, I'm glad you liked it.

Toni the Mink: Hehe, I knew at least one person was going to think that about Akira and Pan. You pervert! Okay, I'm just kidding. ;P Anyway, the little scene at the beginning of this chapter was originally going to be in the last one, but it just didn't seem to fit, so it became a flashback. As far as baseball goes, you'll notice that in chapter two, both Akira and Pan fell asleep during the game...actually the only reason I went with baseball as opposed to a better sport (basketball, soccer, football, professional badminton, watching paint dry, etc.) is because in all of DBZ the only sport ever shown to my recollection was baseball (Yamcha played professionally and then Gohan played in P.E.). Well, I'm glad that you liked the fluff, it doesn't seem like anyone really hated it or at least no one said they hated it, so I guess I did okay...I still don't like it, but at least most seemed to think it was decent.

Brooklyn: Thanks for the review. I think you're probably right about the nameks and eating or at least as right as anyone can be since there is no definitive answer in DB/Z/GT. I guess living on Earth just makes nameks hungry for something with a little more substance!

Legend: Yeah, it was boring, but at least it's over now so we can get on to finally finishing up the story.

BballAnimeLover89: Nah, you weren't air headed, I just added that to be funny since you were changing your name. Anyway, I'm glad you prefer basketball to baseball, I seriously have no idea why that sport is still called America's past time, but I'll have to take your word for it on the excitement level of volleyball. My high school was ridiculously good at volleyball (only lost one game in three years), so the games were all pretty quick and painless, but then I still never really went to see them (unless I got to off season basketball practice a little early and there was a game going on). As for romance in movies...I gave up on that a long time ago. Every once in a while a decent flick will come out with almost real romance, but for the most part Hollywood doesn't have a clue about real romance (which might explain why the average lifespan of a Hollywood marriage is something like two years).

Nova Flame: I certainly hope that no one is _ever_ in a situation like that (I certainly wouldn't want to have to compete with a time traveling me from the future), but know what you mean about relationships being on the rocks and never getting fixed despite the love the two people share. Sometimes people are just too thick headed for their own good. But since I said this story was going to have a mostly happy ending, the Akira-Pan romance couldn't end badly. I'm glad you liked it though. I like your explanation behind namek eating habits, though it still doesn't explain Piccolo or Demon King Piccolo's apparent meat eating tendencies...I guess they were both evil (at least in the beginning) so maybe bad nameks like meat and good ones just drink water or eat fruit. Wow, this is a lot of conversation for two sentences in the middle of a filler scene! ;P

nicole: I'm glad that you liked my romance chapter; hopefully there was enough blood to satisfy you in this chapter.

ashlee: I'm glad that I have a few suckers for romance in my audience and that you didn't find the last chapter too cheesy. No worries about not reviewing, I just like hearing from my readers. Whether it's every chapter or every other chapter or every ten chapters, it's no big deal. Just thanks for reviewing.

donkeykong27: This story will round things out for both Kanata's timeline and Akira's. I might even be writing a two chapter long epilogue to make sure I all my bases covered. As for a sequel, if I were to do one it would involve the "fixed" timeline since most everyone in the other timeline is now deceased. After reading your comment on killing some little animal as my lone killing in the chapter, I actually thought that would be a hilarious idea, but too much of this chapter was already written…maybe in another chapter I'll do something like that.

anouk: I'm glad you liked the last chapter, you're right, it is the way it's supposed to be. Yeah, Kanata's had a rough ten years, but maybe he'll be happy in the end…at least he'll get to kill a lot of people before the stories over!


	64. Righting the Wrongs of the Past Part II

**Chapter 64: Righting the Wrongs of the Past Part II**

o

Piccolo and Akira shared a glance as King Kai jerked his hand away from Kanata as though he had been burned, looking visibly shaken by whatever it was that the saiyan from the future had shown him in his mind.

"This is the kind of scum that's out there, I just need your help finding them and they won't even have the chance to do any of the things you just saw," Kanata whispered to the kai.

King Kai was quiet for a moment and then said, "I'm not allowed to show you exactly where they are, the kai's can't interfere on that level." Kanata started to object, but before he could, the ancient martial arts master held up a hand to silence him, "However, if I were to point you in their general direction, I wouldn't technically be breaking the rules regardless of what you do with the information."

Kanata smiled, "I think I can live with that."

King Kai wasn't smiling, but he telepathically showed the older saiyan the approximate locations of most of the more powerful warriors from the memories. A few seconds later, Kanata and Akira were gone again.

"What did you see?" Piccolo asked.

"You probably don't want to know," King Kai replied quietly as he started trying to buff the scratches out of the hood of his car, "but let's just say that the future that would have been was not a very happy place for a lot of people."

ooo

No one had seen either Akira or Kanata yet this morning and neither were at the breakfast table when Pan and her family arrived. The young woman was finding herself growing increasingly annoyed with the disappearing act her boyfriend had recently mastered.

Yeah, annoyed…definitely not worried, just annoyed.

After all, what could possibly happen to them? They were both plenty powerful to take on any threat that might materialize…provided, of course, that the threat wasn't one of them. So, yes, she was annoyed that they were somewhere goofing off and hadn't even bothered to let her know where they were going…at least, she hoped they were goofing off.

"Good morning everyone," Krillin said cheerfully, rousing the young woman from her thoughts, as he sat down and started eating.

"Have you seen Akira or Kanata?" Pan asked quickly.

"Are they the tall ones with the black hair that look alike?" the former monk teased and then, seeing a slight twitch in the young woman's eye, he quickly said, "No, not since last night."

Pan scowled and turned back to her breakfast while Krillin raised an eyebrow in Gohan's direction.

"No one's seen them today and Pan's a little worried," the older saiyan filled in as he bite into an apple.

"I am _not_ worried," Pan growled, "I'm just wondering where they are."

Krillin smiled and dug a spoon into his cereal as he said, "Hey, you don't need to worry about them. They probably just went to have a little chat or something, what could happen?"

ooo

Reality itself bent and twisted as the two saiyans crossed a distance in a few short minutes that would take even the most advanced starships over a year to travel. Akira was dimly aware of planets and stars that were probably millions of miles apart being squeezed together as he and Kanata passed them by. And then, almost as quickly as the universe had collapsed in on itself, it snapped back into place as the two saiyans reached their destination.

The younger of the two found himself slightly out of breath, never in his life had he traveled so far with Instant Transmission, even the journey to New Namek was nothing like what he'd just experienced. As he willed his breathing to slow to a normal pace, he glanced around at his new surroundings. He and Kanata were standing in the middle of a large, lavishly decorated room with at least thirty aliens standing all around them. Up until a moment ago, the aliens had apparently been facing a tall, expensive-looking throne upon which sat a short alien with markings that made him looked very similar to Frieza except this creature was red where Frieza had been purple. Now all of the occupants of the room were looking at the saiyans in obvious shock at their sudden appearance out of thin air.

"Mind telling me what we're doing here?" Akira whispered out of the side of his mouth.

"I told you, I'm going to show you what your future would have held," the older man replied glancing around at the different people in the room with contempt.

"Gee and I didn't even get to meet the ghosts of Christmas Past or Present," Akira replied with a roll of his eyes.

"Stop being an idiot," Kanata hissed as he smacked his younger self on the back of the head. "You told me earlier that you didn't think you could ever have turned into me…well, part of the reason I am what I am is sitting in this room."

Several tough looking guards took up fighting stances and seemed to be preparing to attack, but before they could the changeling raised a red finger-nailed hand signaling them to wait.

"I must say that while your entrance was rather impressive, I am not in the habit of allowing strangers to barge in unannounced," the changeling said in a pleasant voice. "Now, hurry and state your business so I can decide whether or not I'm going to allow you to live."

Kanata ignored the alien on the throne and turned to Akira as he pointed to a large guard in shinny armor, "That's Chegaoo, the captain of the guards. His power levels only 25,000, but he likes to think he's important. He got this job after he slaughtered his own people when Heata decided he'd had enough of them."

The one called Chegaoo's eyes widened in surprise. "How do you know about that?" he growled, his arm muscles flexing as they readied themselves for combat.

"Oh yeah," Kanata continued with a tight smile, "He likes to ask stupid questions too."

Akira looked at his double in confusion, still not entirely grasping what the point of all this was.

Kanata glanced around the room until he found one of the people he was looking for, "Ah, good, I was worried we were going to have to hunt him down." He pointed at a tall, muscular blue skinned alien, "That's Buke. No one here really likes him and given the scum in the room, that's saying something. You would have killed him in about five years when you found him raping a helpless, little girl while we were on a mission…and then you would have killed the little girl too."

Buke looked up at the changeling, apparently hoping to see the signal to kill the two strange men who had just appeared out of thin air, but the small alien seemed be rather amused by the little show.

Kanata continued pointing to different people, telling Akira who they were, some of the crimes they had or would have committed and often times, how they would have died. The younger saiyan did his best to take in all the information as slowly a picture of what the last ten years of Kanata's life had really been like began to form in his mind. Finally the saiyan from the future pointed to the changeling who was still watching the saiyans in silence and apparently waiting for some sort of answer to his initial question about their identities.

"And this is the leader of them all, the new changeling on the block who's trying to cash in on his cousin and uncle's fame. His names Heata and he's actually pretty strong, compared to Chiaotzu and maybe Yamcha, but the rest of your friends could probably handle him fairly easily."

"Heata?" Akira asked.

"If you think that's funny," Kanata started chuckling, "his dad was _Prince Hot_. I guess Frieza's grandpa was a little on the loony side, started calling himself Lord Tempra one day and when he had kids he named them after temperatures."

Heata practically leapt to his feet, suddenly no longer finding the two saiyans as funny as he had earlier. "I will not allow you to speak that way about my family."

Kanata didn't even look up at him, "Kold and Hot were his kids and now they have kids called Frieza and Heata, weird, huh? I guess idiocy runs in the family," he smiled and then added, "Unfortunately for Heata here, the Kolds were the stronger side of the family so they got all of the glory. He's a little touchy about it, but everyone knows he's a lot weaker than his cousin."

Heata's face twisted with rage for a moment and then relaxed, "Chegaoo, give me a reading on these two."

The tall Captain of the Guards nodded and pressed the button on his scouter, it only took a second for the little device to flash up the answer on the eye piece. "The younger one is so weak his power doesn't even register," Chegaoo announced, sounding almost disappointed that this apparent threat was actually nothing but a small nuisance that would be taken care of in a matter of seconds. "The older one has a power level of 100."

"Kill them," Heata said with a smile that showed off his sharp teeth.

"With pleasure," the large alien said as he stepped forward and cracked his knuckles.

The reaction was immediate. Half the aliens who had been staring at Akira and Kanata with obvious killer intent charged the two saiyans, the other half just sat back and watched, ready to jump in should their comrades need help.

"Stop," Akira yelled, "We don't want to fight you."

His remarks, however, were offset by the sight of a decapitated head flying through the air and showering the room with sticky green blood. Akira's and several of the attacking aliens turned in surprise to see Kanata holding up a headless corpse and grinning maniacally.

"Um, okay, _I_ don't want to fight you," the younger saiyan amended lamely and then dodged away from the first of several punches and kicks aimed for him.

ooo

Trunks' eyes snapped open and he sat up with a start, breathing heavily and scanning the room for enemies though he wasn't sure why. Slowly his breathing returned to normal as whatever nightmare had awaken him slipped back into the haze of his subconscious, but his eyes continued to reflexively go over every detail of the room in search of anything amiss.

"Are you alright?" a soft, comforting voice asked from the bed.

The lavender haired saiyan looked over his shoulder in mild surprise at Icalla, who was once again in his bed—he really needed to start going to bed earlier so he wouldn't be surprised when his wife-to-be was lying next to him in the morning. He started to answer her, but she didn't really look like she was awake anymore. Her long, brown hair was a tangled mess that covered most of her face and her body was curled up comfortably under the warm covers.

"Well?" she asked, though still didn't push her hair out of her eyes so she could see him properly.

Trunks was quiet for a moment as he tried to remember why it was that he had woken up so suddenly. "I had a bad dream is all," he replied as the memory surfaced at last.

Icalla pushed her hair away from her face and looked up at him with those big, brown eyes that he loved so much. "Want to talk about it?"

"It was just a dream."

"Maybe, but it still upset you," she noted, touching his hand which was still tightly clenched in a fist.

Trunks glanced down at his hand in surprise and then quickly forced it to relax. "It was nothing."

The powerful saiyan instantly knew that he had made a mistake as Icalla's eye's narrowed and her lips twisted into a disconcerting scowl. He might be stronger than her, but that didn't mean he wasn't afraid of her every once in awhile. For some strange reason, saiyan men seemed drawn towards the only women on the planet who could make them cower from time to time.

"I dreamed you were dead...like in Kanata's time," he confessed.

Icalla's face softened instantly and she sat up, all appearances of sleepiness suddenly gone. "That's not going to happen" she whispered soothingly, "...not this time."

Trunks nodded, but his eyes remained troubled. "I just always thought that we were all invincible, you know? We've faced so many dangerous things, but it always worked out in the end...I guess I just assumed it always would. Now that I know it didn't, well, I don't know what to think." The saiyan pushed his lavender hair out of his eyes and held it on top of his head with both hands while he tried to think of what he should say next.

There was a long moment of silence and then Icalla decided to get his mind off the troubles of the uncertainty of the future. She let her eyes travel over his well sculpted body and then began to giggle. "You know, if I had a camera right now, I could probably make about a million zeni with a few pictures of you looking like that. Every girly magazine on Earth would want them."

"Huh?" Trunks didn't have the slightest idea what she was talking about.

"Oh, come on! Trunks, the sexiest billionaire on the planet, bare-chested, brooding expression on his face, and his eyes filled with intensity," she fluttered her eyelashes dramatically as she clasped her hands over her heart, "Why, a picture of everyone's favorite purple-haired heartthrob in such a titillating pose would be enough to make even the strongest woman swoon! Magazines would be flying off the rack faster than the printing presses could spit them out."

Trunks rolled his eyes in annoyance, though a smile tugged at his lips, "Yeah right, you'd be lucky if you got ten bucks for them."

Icalla stopped fluttering her eyes and considered it for a moment before replying, "You're probably right, I'll have to wait and see if I can get a picture of you in the buff, those sell well…or so I've heard."

"Hey, that picture was a fake and you know it!" the saiyan yelled a little louder than he'd intended, his mind finally letting go of the fears that had been captured in his nightmare.

Icalla smiled mischievously and whispered, "Not yet, but I'll find out for myself soon enough."

Trunks fell out of bed with a loud thud and Icalla started laughing.

ooo

Akira was doing his best not to hurt his attackers too seriously. None of them had the power level to be much of a threat to him, unless maybe they combined their attacks somehow, but even then the damage would be minimal. He generally just slipped around their attacks and then brought his fist down on the back of their heads, knocking them unconscious, but leaving them alive. A few of the stronger ones–or at least ones that didn't have actual heads or necks–required slightly more extreme measures, usually in the form of a few broken limbs, before they went down.

Every once in a while, the young man would glance in the direction of Kanata and the sight drove home exactly how right he had been in his judgment of the man. The saiyan from the future was drenched in blood as he finished his opponents as ruthlessly as possible. At that moment he had just thrust his hand into the throat of a large alien, and snapped its neck with a loud crack, and then ripped out what was probably the respiratory section of the poor alien's throat.

"Why are you doing this?" Akira yelled as he continued dodging the attacks that were thrown at him.

Kanata turned to him and grinned. "Aren't you having fun?" he asked as his hand slammed into the chest of his next opponent, there was a wet, popping sound signaling the internal destruction of the alien's lungs as its sternum caved in under the force of the blow, and then blood began bubbling out of its mouth. "This is basically what you would have been doing once you failed to protect Pan and the others from the Arlean...of course you would have been working _with_ these guys and wiping out entire civilizations, but you get the idea. By the way, knocking them out isn't getting you anywhere, in case you haven't noticed," Kanata said as he nodded in the direction of two aliens that Akira had taken out who were now getting up and preparing to attack the young man again.

Akira looked around the room at the ever growing collection of corpses around Kanata's feet as he continued to dodge around the attacks of several enemies, though he didn't seem to be paying any attention to his attackers, "This is wrong. We don't have any reason to be attacking these people..."

"No reason?" Kanata stopped and stared at his younger self. Another of the warriors, who had been waiting to attack him, thought he saw and opening and ran forward, bringing two large fists down on the older saiyan who didn't even budge as they slammed into the back of his head. "They've killed millions of people just in the last few years and if I hadn't saved you from it, you would have been helping them! You would have killed men, women and children without remorse...you might not like it, but in this case, the ends justified the means...how can you think that this sort of evil should remain?"

"We can't save everyone in the universe from every bad thing that could happen and by killing these guys you're taking away their chance of seeing their mistakes and changing their lives," Akira pointed out still dancing around the attacks of his enemies. "What if someone went back and killed Vegeta when he was still evil? Without Vegeta, Goku wouldn't have been able to beat Omega Shenron or Buu, Trunks and Bra would never have been born, we might not have ever known about Ammit until it was too late, and probably a whole mess of other things would have turned out a lot worse than they did."

At this point, several of the aliens who had been attacking Akira and Kanata stopped and watched in wonder as the two argued across the room all the while warding off the attacks of numerous aliens who were still trying to take advantage of their apparent inattention.

Kanata sighed, "You're willing to sacrifice millions of lives just on the off chance that one of these idiots is really a good guy deep down?" He rubbed his temples in exasperation and then kicked one foot out, slicing through the leg of an oncoming attacker who fell to the ground and grabbed his stump of a leg as he screamed in pain. Finally the older saiyan nodded and said, "I suppose you could be right," a ball of ki formed in his hand and shot at the alien who's leg he'd just destroyed, killing it instantly, "some of these guys could be heroes just waiting to be discovered," another ki blast ended the life of another alien, "but their victims might become heroes as well and I won't risk their lives just to test the theory," he held out his hand and formed a destructo disk which he threw at a small cluster of warriors, decapitating several of them and leaving the rest wishing they'd been decapitated as arms and other body parts were separated from their bodies.

Akira almost reminded Kanata that he'd not only risked those innocent lives he claimed to care about, he'd helped take them in his own timeline, but the truth was he didn't completely disagree with his future self. He certainly didn't want to see any of the aliens he was fighting have the chance to kill anyone, he just wished there was a way to stop them without killing them, a way to give them a chance at redemption.

Kanata, apparently reading his younger counterpart's thoughts said (as he killed yet another alien) "You told me while we were fighting that we have an obligation to protect those in need...I don't think I agree with you necessarily, but if you want to protect people, sometimes you have to take lives. Sometimes you have to completely destroy a threat to make sure that it won't return and come after innocent people when you aren't there to protect them."

Akira bit his lip as his head tilted slightly to the side and a large fist passed harmlessly over his shoulder. The young man wasn't sure what the right thing to do would be in this case. He continued internally debating it for several minutes, all the while sliding around his several attackers' punches and kicks as if they were moving in slow motion, and then finally came to a decision. No matter how much he hated to admit it, Kanata was right. His methods were horribly, horribly wrong, but the outcome that he claimed to be going for was the right one.

Men like those they were fighting could not be allowed to hurt innocent people and if they would not stop by themselves, he would have to force them to stop...

ooo

At this point, it was pretty obvious to Pan that Akira and Kanata had left the Lookout, though where they could have gone and for what purpose was beyond her. Things between her and Akira had been 'fixed,' but it didn't seem likely that their reconciliation would have a positive effect on the issues her boyfriend had with his future self.

And so she sat on the edge of the Lookout and worried.

She was fairly certain that Kanata wouldn't start another fight with Akira. After all, he had said that he wasn't able to kill his younger self for reasons that he either didn't understand or didn't want to explain, but Akira was another matter. He would not have a problem picking a fight with his future counterpart, he wouldn't kill Kanata, but he'd beat him with in an inch of his life…if he could.

"They'll be just fine," Dende's calm voice said from just behind her.

The demi-saiyan turned and glanced up at the namek, "How do you know?"

"Just a feeling," he replied casually as he sat down next to her.

The two sat in silence, looking down at the planet below them and thinking. Finally Pan asked, "I've always wondered, how much of everyone's lives down there can you see?"

"Are you wondering if I can see boring things like what laws the different branches of the government are working on or the more interesting stuff like the fact that your friend Stacy is wearing some rather risqué lacy panties and nothing else right now?" the namek chuckled.

Pan's eyes widened in horror as visions of her own time spent in nothing but her underwear flashed before her eyes. If Dende could see all of that…

"I'm just kidding Pan," the Earth's Guardian said with a smile. "I can see some things, but nothing that personal. Mostly I just get a feeling about how things are going down there; I don't really get images unless something big is happening."

The young woman let out a small sigh of relief. She wasn't sure what she would have done if Dende hadn't been joking…probably put on as much clothing as possible and never changed again. Master Roshi was bad enough, but having a lecherous kami who could see you at any moment would have been terrifying.

"That wasn't funny," Pan did her best to glare at her green skinned friend. "You've been spending too much time with Krillin and Yamcha for your own good. If you aren't careful they'll turn you into just as big of a pervert as Master Roshi."

Dende looked horrified at her statement. "I'm sorry," he replied meekly, "Human jokes are kind of a mystery to me even after all this time…I was just trying to be funny."

Now it was Pan's turn to smile. "I'm just teasing you Dende," she said as she began to laugh

The young kami stared at her in confusion for a moment and then joined in…even though he didn't really get why her tricking him was funny, but him tricking her was not.

ooo

"Ha!" Akira yelled as he pushed his aura out in dramatic fashion. The sudden burst of power threw everyone in the room that wasn't named Kanata or Heata against the wall.

"Now then," the young man said, "we don't need to fight anymore...there's no point in you all throwing away your lives...but I won't let you take anymore innocent lives either. If you stop what you have been doing and use your strength for the good of others, you can walk away now. If you won't stop..." his voice trailed off threateningly.

The warriors who were lying against the wall looked confused and turned to Heata for some sort of direction.

The small lizard smiled graciously, "You two are quite powerful, but you are in no position to make such demands."

Kanata rolled his eyes and chuckled, "Have you not been paying attention to what's been happening in this room?"

"Oh, I've been watching and I'm impressed, but remember who you are talking to. I am Heata. I am the strongest being in this quadrant of the universe and the ones you've been fighting aren't even my elite troops." He pressed a button on his throne and an alarm could be heard from outside the room, "In just a few seconds ever single warrior in my palace will be here."

Kanata grinned evilly as dozens of powerful fighters began to pour into the room, "Excellent, it would have been a pain trying to hunt them all down."

ooo

Trunks and Icalla were still in their room even though everyone else at the Lookout was most likely up and about. The two nearly-weds were just enjoying each other's company and weren't in any particular hurry to leave…and perhaps Trunks was enjoying the sight of his fiancé in her pajamas.

They had been talking about wedding plans and Icalla ran through her list of what last minute things needed to be finished before the big day. Eventually she leaned over a little farther than intended (or maybe just as far as intended) and Trunks got an eyeful of cleavage, rendering him speechless for several minutes.

Icalla giggled at her fiancé and decided to take the opportunity to comb her hair and get ready to eventually leave the room, which they obviously had to do at some point that day—whether they wanted to or not.

"So, what do you think about eloping?" Trunks asked as he finally regained his ability to speak, trying to put the question out there as if it was the most common thing in the world for people to be talking about.

"Where'd that come from?" Icalla asked in surprise.

"It's just something I've been thinking about lately…" _'Especially since you decided to sleep in my bed the last two nights.'_

"I'm pretty sure my mother would kill you," the brown haired woman replied in a sweet voice as she brushed out the last of the tangles in her brunette locks.

"We could still have a regular wedding...we'd just already be married," the saiyan pointed out.

"Hmmm, in that case, I think she'd only permanently maim you."

"Really?" Trunks wasn't sure if they were joking any more or not.

"Well, I guess she did say once that if I wanted to elope I could," Icalla said thoughtfully.

"So, she'd be okay with it then?" the saiyan asked hopefully.

"The only proviso she put on it was that we had to invite her and my dad."

Trunks scowled and crossed his arms in annoyance, "Your mom kind of missed the whole point of eloping, didn't she?"

His fiancé kissed his scowling lips and smiled, "Yep."

"We could just keep it a secret between you and me..."

"I doubt it. Between the paparazzi getting a picture of us walking out of where ever we get married or some snitch ratting us out, she'd find out for sure," Icalla said matter-of-factly. "Besides, she has some sort of freaky mind reading powers when it comes to me...she'd know the moment she laid eyes on me."

Trunks couldn't help but smile as he leaned down and kissed her forehead, "Those aren't mind reading powers, sweetheart, you just can't lie to save your life."

Now it was Icalla's turn to scowl as she gave a small "Hmph" and headed into the bathroom to change out of her pajamas.

Trunks watched her go for a moment and then climbed back into bed to wait his turn in the bathroom, wishing there was some way to alter the space time continuum so his wedding date would arrive faster.

Maybe Kanata would be willing to let him borrow the time machine for a little while…

ooo

Akira still couldn't bring himself to kill any of the aliens attacking him. He didn't want to leave them capable of hurting other people (as he was showing by causing damage of a far more permanent nature than he had been before), but the situation he found himself in still felt wrong, he and Kanata were the instigators of the violence, not protectors of the innocent. His future self had come here for some sort of revenge over the life that he had willingly chosen in his own timeline, but regardless of how evil these creatures were, there was still a chance for them to turn their lives around and Akira didn't want to deny them that chance any more than he wanted to let them kill helpless people.

The younger saiyan just wished there could be some sort of a peaceful way to settle things, maybe if they took out Heata it would be enough to scatter the changeling's forces. After all, if you take out the head, you kill the monster, right?

Of course, finding even a moderately peaceful, or at least slightly less death-filled, ending to a fight of this magnitude was always much easier when your semi-evil future self wasn't slaughtering his opponents with reckless abandon.

Akira sent another of his enemies flying into the wall and out of the fight, but the red skinned alien was just replaced by three more. The young man sighed as he dodged a punch from behind and then kicked the attacking creature up into the ceiling without ever looking back at him or her (it was kind of hard to tell with some of his opponents). Akira threw a powerful ki blast into a crowd of warriors in front of him and gained himself enough space to look around for a moment. What he saw caused his stomach to churn.

Kanata was covered from head to toe in the blood of his enemies. He had just grabbed two hapless aliens and slammed their faces together with so much force that their heads literally exploded, showering those around them with brain matter. Rather than waiting for the shocked warriors around him to recover, he immediately drove his fist into the chest of the first person he came across and then fired a ki blast, shredding the warrior from the inside and also killing several fighters behind him.

Akira couldn't help himself; he just stood and stared at the masterpiece of death his future self was creating. In fact, so captivating was the scene before them that even Heata's warriors who were standing around Akira turned and watched in horror/fascination at Kanata's handiwork.

The older saiyan spun under a kick from one of the many warriors who continued to attack him despite the obvious difference between his power level and that of most everyone else in the room, the instant the foot sailed over his head his hand shot out and destroyed the knee of the warrior's other leg. The alien cried out in pain and started to fall, but even as he did, Kanata grabbed the foot that had just passed over him and pulled the alien over his head and then slammed him into the ground. There was a disturbing noise when the warrior hit the ground, it was not a loud bang as one would expect, but sounded more like the noise a water-balloon makes when it hits the sidewalk—not coincidentally, the effect the impact had on the warrior's body wasn't all that different from the effect the sidewalk has on a water-balloon.

The rest of the fighters surrounding Kanata backed away in awe and fear as they were splattered with blood from the explosion of their fallen comrade's body. Their fear of Heata had been driving them forward, but at last a new fear had surpassed it and now they weren't sure what they should do. The blood soaked demon of death before them almost seemed to be galvanized by their hesitation as he charged into the crowd and continued the slaughter.

"Kill him! Kill him!" Heata sounded a little more frantic than he had before; watching your strongest warriors get mowed down as if they were nothing can do that to a warlord.

Kanata killed one warrior, then spun and killed another, and then another, and another. Soon, there were more dead bodies around him than living ones. He killed again and again and again as images of the horrors he had helped many of his victims commit flashed before his eyes, the innocent lives he'd taken, the beautiful cities he'd reduced to dust, and the planets he'd turned into uninhabited wastelands. He knew killing all of these scumbags wouldn't undo the crimes that he'd committed, but at least they wouldn't be repeated in this timeline.

A large, blue skinned alien fell before him, and then a skinny one with orange hair, and then a creature with two heads and four arms was ripped in half, and then a short, beautiful, young woman with curly, red hair, pointed ears and a slight golden tint to her skin…

Kanata's fist froze a fraction of an inch away from the woman's face; her lilac colored eyes were wide with fear.

"Cypress…"

o

o

A/N: Well, thanks for reading…I really thought all this Heata stuff was going to be finished in this chapter, but I guess it'll take at least one more (and hopefully only one more). Sorry this was a little on the late side, I just wasn't in a writing _mood_ this last week for some reason...probably just spent too much time looking forward to _Revenge of the Sith_ and then a good amount of time watching R_evenge of the Sith_ and then way, way too much time thinking about _Revenge of the Sith_...As you can see, I had a pretty busy week, but at least this chapter was fairly long, right? Anyway, the next chapter won't be out over the weekend because I'm heading out of town for a wedding and probably won't have much of a chance to write while I'm gone. With any luck I'll be able to post about this time next week if not just a little bit later and that chapter should conclude most of the lose end tie ups and then we can start tying up the important stuff. Please review and let me know what you thought.

Geoffery Oh: Wow, thanks. It's quite an honor to be one of the few that you read.

Toni the Mink: You know, everyone seems to like Kumo. Somehow he steals the show even though he plays such a minor role in everything (which is understandable since he's only two and a half). I actually have a lot of fun writing the Kumo scenes when they pop in my head; I've always found the antics of children to be hilarious. Seriously, what sort of thought process could possibly lead someone to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to cover yourself in diaper rash cream (which my brother once did as a child) or that all the plants your mom just spent several hours arranging in pots and in her garden would look nicer in a large pile in the middle of the yard (...that one was me)?

Nova Flame: Yeah, I'm a sex-should-stay-in-marriage kind of guy myself. It's kind of funny that people who don't have sex until they're married are the one's basically rebelling against the social order of things...anyway, this way I don't have to worry about all the awkwardness that would no doubt show up if Akira and Pan were to take their relationship to _that_ level.

Courtney: I think I spent as much time researching what type of car King Kai had in the anime as I did writing the whole chapter, so I'm glad you liked that scene. Sorry about misinterpreting your review...you're right, it took kind of a long twisted road to move Vegeta from planet destroyer to overprotective father. I wonder what would have happened if Bulma and his first child was a girl instead of Trunks? Maybe he's always had a soft spot in his heart for little girls.

Queen Asinoe: Yeah...it did kind of suck, didn't it? Oh well, it could have been worse, at least that one line was funny enough to get you smacked, that's pretty good. Thankfully, most of the icky love stuff is out of the way so I won't have to apologize for it anymore.

Rejhan: Yeah, Kumo pretty much rules...or at least most people seem to like him. He actually reminds me a little of Goten when he was a kid (though obviously much younger) and seeing as how Goten is his father and all, that's probably a good thing. I'm glad you liked the Kanata flashback scenes, they were fun to write.

Francis Keenan: Haha, every time I put a little mystery/secret (like the untold third wish) into this story someone always figures it out before the truth shows up. I guess I must have some really smart reviewers. As for Akira making a trip to the future with Kanata...time will tell.

Anouk: Don't worry, I wouldn't just say: "And then Kanata got into his ship and headed back to his time and no one knew what became of him. The End." ...Actually, that's pretty good...maybe I'll just wrap up the story in one short chapter! No, no, Kanata's fate (as well as everyone else's for that matter) will be told and might even make a little bit of sense if some truly incredible burst of inspiration hits me at just the right moment.

ashlee: I kind of chuckled when I saw your comment on Kanata's flashback about it showing that he is still good. Especially since after he kills Buke and the poor girl thanks him, he kills her as well. Still, I'm glad that you liked the chapter. I thought Chapter 63 was much better than the one before it.

BballAnimeLover89: I hope there were enough villains in here for you, even if they were kind of just glossed over because I didn't feel like putting too much detail into the slaughter of Heata's men. I wanted Akira to get a chance to see where he would have been had the future played out the way it originally did.

donkeykong27: I knew you were joking, but it was such a funny idea (and since I wasn't going to get to the slaughter of Heata's men until this chapter) I almost tried to fit it in. I don't know if I would say that I have a _fetish_ with Vegeta and Bulma's love life...they just strike me as the kind of people who would, um, find time for that sort of thing. Besides, everyone knows the only reason married couples fight is so they can have "make up" sex and Vegeta and Bulma fight more than any couple I've ever seen! ;P

Nicole: I'm glad you liked it. I always thought that I needed to have a little bit more of Akira/Kanata's time spent working for Heata and the last chapter seemed like a good spot to stick it in.


	65. Righting the Wrongs of the Past Part III

**Chapter 65: Righting the Wrongs of the Past III**

o

Dende and Pan sat together for a while, enjoying each others company, but not really talking. The demi saiyan was trying to think about something other than Akira and Kanata, but finding it rather difficult, and the namek was wondering if it was his place to pry in something so personal without being invited. In the end, he decided that it was something she would want to work out for herself, so he quietly excused himself and headed back to the palace to check on his other guests.

Pan was actually glad that the kami had left. It wasn't that she didn't like his presence or anything, in fact he was a pretty easy target for jokes and didn't mind being teased; she just wanted to worry about Kanata and Akira in peace...

Unfortunately peace wasn't in the cards for her at the moment.

"Hey Pan!" Mr. Satan called out as he hurried over to her.

"Hi Grandpa," Pan replied, surprised that he hadn't gotten upset about her feet dangling off the edge of the Lookout. He usually became quite panicked whenever there was the possibility of something even remotely dangerous happening to her. Either he hadn't noticed the sudden drop off or he was in a rare non-worrying mood. She wasn't completely sure when it had happened, but somewhere between her mother graduating from high school and Pan learning to walk, her grandfather had become a chronic worrier...worse than Chi-Chi sometimes, which was a pretty scary thought.

"I just thought I'd come say 'hi' to my granddaughter who didn't bother to talk to me much last night," the pseudo-savior of the world said with a smile.

"Oh...yeah, sorry about that," Pan was well aware of the fact that if she didn't talk to him, most likely no one besides her father and mother had either. Hercule was rather out of place among the powerful Z-Fighters and a few of them didn't have any qualm about making him a little uncomfortable since he'd become extremely wealthy by taking credit for their victories or by "beating" them in the Tenkaichi Budoukia.

Vegeta was naturally the worst about it. Pan was pretty sure the short warrior got some sort of sick pleasure out of giving her grandfather a hard time.

"I had some...things I had to work out," she added, hoping he would catch on.

"It wasn't that _boy_, was it?" Hercule asked. He hadn't ever shown much of an outward dislike of Akira, but it was a well documented fact that no one was good enough for his granddaughter. Even Gohan, after revealing that it was _he_ who had saved the world from Cell and after dying to protect the Earth from Buu, had been frowned upon for many years. With Pan obviously upset over something Akira had done, the young man's stock was once again falling in the champ's eyes.

"Sort of," Pan admitted, "Things have been a bit..._weird_, lately."

Hercule frowned in confusion. No one had really bothered to explain to him just what was going on; Videl had only said that they were celebrating the defeat of someone who had planned on taking over the world when she and Gohan stopped by his mansion to pick him up. What could possibly be so weird about that?

There was that older guy who looked like Akira, but he hadn't been around long enough for Hercule to figure out who he was and no one had seemed particularly interested in explaining him either. No, it seemed far more likely that Akira had done something to his granddaughter to upset her...

Pan watched in mild amusement as her grandfather spent a considerable amount of effort thinking about her words. She'd grown up around him, seeing him at least a few times every week since she was a baby, she knew exactly how he reacted to most things and no doubt right now he was trying to figure out just how mad he should be at Akira. Of course, she could have just told him the ends and outs of the problem, but she wanted something to distract her from her probably-unnecessary worrying about Akira and Kanata and watching Grandpa Hercule work himself into a nice rant was always fun.

She'd calm him down in a few minutes anyway.

ooo

"…Cypress."

Kanata's piercing black eyes locked onto the young woman who continued to stare at him in fear.

There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch on for an eternity and then finally the saiyan from the future whispered, "How long have you been here?"

"…" the woman did not even blink.

"HOW LONG?" Kanata demanded, grabbing her roughly by the arm and waking her from her fear induced stupor.

"I, I…I don—"

In his frustration he nearly gave her a good shake to get her to answer. He had been certain that she had not arrived at Heata's yet. Hadn't she told him that she'd only been there for a few years? He couldn't remember. For the first time, he wished he would have paid more attention to a member of his squad during his decade of servitude.

Before Kanata could get anything out of her, his senses prickled and he glanced over her shoulder as a powerful warrior with some sort of weapon reared back and swung at them, not caring that he was going to killa comrade and probably wouldn't do anything more than annoy his enemy.

"Down!" Kanata pushed Cypress's head down as a large club cut through the air where they had been a moment before and a fist also passed over their ducking heads at the same time. The fist and the club met with a bone shattering impact, which was attested to by the cry of pain from the owner of the fist. Kanata silenced the whimpering alien, who was clutching his broken hand; with a quick kick that sent the large warrior's head through the roof…his body did not make the trip.

With yet another enemy taken care of, the saiyan from the future turned to the owner of the club and found that not only was the impact bone shattering, it was apparently club shattering as well. A red ki blast shot from the palm of Kanata's hand and slammed into the powerful-looking alien's chest a half second before it exploded out of the warrior's back.

The last of the warriors who had been attacking the older saiyan backed away from the harbinger of the destruction of Heata's army, the poor creature's will to fight had been completely stripped from him. He nervously glanced at the few remaining fighters standing around Akira and then up at Heata whose face was also filled with uncertainty. The sight of the leader the alien had thought to be nearly all-powerful looking so worried, perhaps even borderline fearful, about the ease with which these two strange men had disposed of his army was more than the panicked warrior could take.

He turned to run, but before he'd even taken two steps a thin ki beam shot from Kanata's finger tip and pierced his skull, killing him instantly.

Heata watched the lifeless body crumple to the ground in shock. What sort of warriors could these men be that they could destroy almost all of his entire fighting force with such deliberate ease? Of the fifty-plus soldiers that had either been in the room or come when he sounded the alarm, fewer than ten remained and all of them had just been standing around the younger of the two fighters for the last few minutes, watching helplessly as the crazed, older warrior slaughtered their comrades.

The changeling wasn't sure what he should do. Should he order the rest of his men to attack? Was there any point in such an effort? These few survivors were no stronger than any of their now-dead fellow soldiers. Would they even attack if he ordered it? They only served him because he was the strongest and offered them their best chance to make a lot of money, but it was possible that he was not the strongest in the room anymore and what good is money when you're dead? Of course, if they were to attack and distract the blood-covered warrior, he might be able to attack the enemy from behind and finish him off or at least injure him.

"Cypress," Heata called out in his best commander voice, "You eight over there. Attack the older one!"

Cypress looked from Heata to Kanata and then back again, she knew what the penalty for disobeying one of Heata's orders was, but she also was more than certain that the man she was standing next to would kill her in a heartbeat if she raised her fist against him. The other eight elite fighters in the room seemed to be going through the same thought process, for several seconds, nobody moved.

"I said attack him now!" Heata roared.

Whether it was the threat in his voice or just an instinct to follow orders given by Heata overriding common sense, all nine of his remaining soldiers attacked as one.

ooo

Dende entered the dinning room, took one look at its occupants and decided that he had other guest he should be checking up on.

Uubu was sitting at the breakfast (maybe it could be called brunch now given how slowly the Z Fighters were making their way down from their rooms) table nervously chewing on his lip and rubbing his hands together. His food was still on his plate, completely untouched.

Vegeta sat across from the young man, his food being quickly and voraciously devoured, but his glaring eyes never moving from the Mystical One.

Bulma sat next to her husband enjoying the peace of the midmorning meal and wondering how long it would take for that peace to be broken by her husband who, despite her best _attempts_ to make him forget about the previous night, was clearly only one wrong word from leaping across the table and attempting to strangle poor Uubu.

Bra was looking highly annoyed with her father. If he thought he could keep her locked away and never let her out to have any fun with a boy, then he had another thing coming! Suddenly a mischievous grin spread across her face, but quickly vanished as she looked across the table to the very intimidated young man.

"Did you sleep well last night Uubu?" the young demi-saiyan asked with a sweet smile.

Uubu's eyes did not leave Vegeta's cold stare as he stammered, "I...uh, y, yes...I slept just fine."

"You're bed wasn't uncomfortable?"

Uubu's eyes widened with fear. Why was she doing this? Didn't she know brining up last night was only going to provoke her father? Was she trying to get him killed? "N, no. I, it...was fine."

"Oh, that's good, I guess," she actually sounded almost disappointed, "My bed was _really_ comfy."

Vegeta was beginning to develop a twitch near his right eye, Uubu looked like he was ready to just cut his losses and make a run for it, and Bulma was doing her best not to burst into laughter at the sight of the two warriors' faces.

"T, t, that's...nice..."

"I bet it was softer than yours," Bra's eyes flickered towards her father for just a second and then she added, "Do you want to go check it out before you leave?"

"THAT'S IT!" Vegeta roared as he dove over the table, his fingers searching for a young, human neck to crush.

Uubu had seen the attack coming and leapt away in time to save his life. He turned and fled the scene as Bra and Bulma grabbed hold of Vegeta and each began yelling at him in loud, shrill voices.

It was about this time that Goten, Valese, and Kumo entered the room. They were hungry, but they weren't _that_ hungry. The trio took one look at the commotion, turned around, and left.

At least two of them did.

Kumo, taking his cue from Bra and Bulma wiggled out of his mother's arms, climbed up on the table and began angrily babbling at Vegeta with lots of finger wagging to make sure that his mostly incoherent points were being made.

Vegeta looked at the toddler and scowled, half-wishing that he was still evil so he could teach Kakarot's grandchild how foolish it was to mock of the Prince of all Saiyans. Unfortunately, he was not evil, and his wife and daughter were currently so worked up that even if he wanted to defend himself from the verbal lashing he was receiving, he doubted he could make his voice heard over all the racket.

With a sigh of resignation, Vegeta folded his arms and stared straight ahead, waiting patiently for the two women to stop yelling and take a breath.

He would be waiting for a long time.

ooo

It was strange for Akira to just sit back and watch, in essence, himself getting attacked by nine, fairly powerful aliens. It was even stranger that he wasn't going to lift a finger to help his older self, even if he needed it.

Akira would have helped Kanata, if he asked, but a few minutes into this fight he had come to the realization that they weren't really here because Kanata wanted to show him what his future could have been like, though that might have been a part of it. They weren't even really here because of the last wish that Kanata had made, though that was definitely part of it. They were here because, deep down…_really_ deep down, Kanata hated himself for what he'd done when he worked for Heata. Despite all the claims that he'd made during their battle with the clone on Namek and during their fight with each other, the saiyan from the future wasn't so confident that he had made the right decisions or walked down the correct path in his life.

And now, he was making up for it…or at least that's what he thought he was doing.

Akira couldn't agree with the way his future self had simply declared everyone in the room to be evil through and through with no hope for redemption, like the redemption he was trying to obtain for himself (whether he knew it or not), but he had decided that he would let the scene play out. Certainly those in the room were as evil as Vegeta had ever been during his time under Frieza and deserving of death, but Akira just couldn't bring himself to be the one to do it.

He knew he was sitting on the fence on this issue, but it had just been sprung on him by his future self. Akira didn't know these people, he hadn't seen their crimes, and he certainly hadn't had time to think about whether or not killing them was the right thing to do. Could he kill some one for a crime that they hadn't committed yet?

That was, in essence, what Kanata was doing. Some of these fighters might not have been here long enough to kill anyone, he wouldn't have known them for at least another year and a half if the future had remained unchanged, so they might not have done anything wrong yet…but they would have, the future had already shown that. Or at least one future had.

And so he watched. He watched as Kanata spun and killed one of the remaining elites with a single punch. He watched as Kanata broke a tall warrior's ankle with a well placed kick and then decapitated him with a ki blast to the neck from point blank range. He watched as Kanata's fist shot out and slammed into the jaw of a short, purple skinned lizard, spinning the alien's head 180 degrees and killing him instantly. He watched as Kanata took out four warriors with a powerful ki blast that brought a large portion of the ceiling crumbling to the ground. He watched as Kanata caught a sword that was descending upon his head, ripped it from its owner's grasp and plunged it through the startled creature's mouth and out the back of his head with a shower of blood.

And he watched as Kanata caught a punch from the woman he'd called Cypress a fraction of an inch before it connected with his head. A quick flick of the saiyan's foot and the gold skinned woman was on the ground.

Kanata shot one quick glance at Heata whose muscles had tensed for a second as he prepared to spring a surprise attack, that one look was enough to stop the changeling dead in his tracks. Then the saiyan from the future slowly turned back to the downed woman and a scowl spread across his face as a ball of ki formed in the palm of his hand.

ooo

"How dare he!" Hercule roared as he jumped to his feet and shook with rage. "He…my little…Argh!"

Pan did her best to hold her smile in. It had actually taken him longer to reach the conclusion that Akira had somehow taken advantage of his precious granddaughter. There was the slightest bit of temptation to mention to him that she would have been willing to _let_ Akira 'take advantage' of her, but he'd said he'd rather wait. It was definitely tempting, but he probably wouldn't have believed her anyway. He would just assume that Akira had somehow twisted her mind and tricked her into offering herself up to him.

"Gra—" Pan started to say, but was quickly interrupted.

"He tricked you into…" his rant continued.

"Grand—" She tried again.

"He took advantage of my little princess!"

"Grandpa!" A small aura formed around her as her annoyance manifested itself physically.

"Eh?" Hercule stopped and looked down at her with a slacked jawed expression on his face. Apparently he had forgotten she was actually still there.

"Akira didn't do anything to me! We haven't done anything like that!"

"Uh, he hasn't?" Hercule was suddenly confused. If Akira hadn't done anything like that then why was he so mad at the young man?

"No," Pan let a small grin appear on her lips, it might have been just a little bit mean to allow her grandfather to come to his own – predictably wrong – conclusion, but it had done the trick and now she had something else to think about besides what Akira and Kanata were up to. "Look, here's what's been going on…" and from there she spent the next several minutes explaining just what it was that had happened between her and Akira and what had been happening in the last few days with the Akira from the future.

ooo

"The only reason you're still alive," Kanata growled as he glared down at Cypress, "is because once you were the only person in my life that I still liked, including myself."

The look in Cypress's eyes showed that she clearly thought he was crazy. Powerful and holding her life in his hands, but definitely crazy.

"So, what's it going to be?" the 'crazy' saiyan asked. "Do you want to fight with me and throw away your life, or do you want to see if your mother was right and Jouten still wants to see his children come back to him?"

Cypress's eyes snapped wide open in surprise at the saiyan's question. "How do you know about my mother?" she demanded, her fear lost in her shock.

"No," Kanata said, his hand still clutching a red ball of ki that could end her life in an instant if so chose, "answer my question. Do you want to side with Heata, or do you want to believe in those 'bedtime' stories you once told me about?"

The gold skinned, young woman was silent for a moment and then nodded. It wasn't really like she had much of a choice anyway.

"Glad to hear it." Kanata smiled as the ball of ki in his hand faded and he reached down to help her to her feet while Akira walked over and stood next to them.

Heata had watched the whole exchange in even more confusion than Cypress and Akira. Why, after killing so many of his warriors, was this strange man sparing this one woman who had no special qualities about her. She hadn't been with his forces long, but she'd been on a few missions. She wasn't all that exceptionally powerful, but she was far from the weakest of his fighters. There was literally nothing about her that would have caught someone's eye, but for some reason she was being spared. There was only one possible explanation:

The man who had butchered so many of his warriors knew her somehow.

Perhaps she had been working with him, but if that was the case, why keep up the facade after it was obvious that there was no one in the room except for Heata with a power level to match either of these strangers?

It didn't really matter, whether she had known them before or not, she had agreed to side with them and that meant she had to share their fate.

"Well," the changeling said as he stepped down from the throne and stood before the two men, "That was certainly an interesting display." The bodies and (more frequently) the body parts of his followers were scattered around the room, blood and gore was ankle deep in some places. "So, what shall you do now?"

"Isn't that obvious?" Kanata asked with a chuckle. "I'm going to kill you…again."

"You'll forgive me if I've missed the joke," the changeling replied with a scowl.

"You're the joke, Heata. You, your uncle, your cousin…you're all going to die at the hands of the same race."

"You're saiyans?" Heata asked with an amused smile. "Well I guess you do live up to your reputations…powerful monkeys with small brains. You're no threat to me."

"Oh no?" there was an explosion of golden light as Kanata transformed.

Heata did not have a scouter on, so he had no idea how powerful the saiyan had just become, but he felt the energy that lifted him off his feet and tossed him against the wall.

Cypress would have joined Heata in his trip towards the wall, but Akira reached out and caught her just as her feet left the floor.

"Still so confident?" Kanata asked as he stalked towards this timeline's version of his former boss.

"Ahh!" Red ki began to radiate around Heata and then exploded as his body expanded and grew. His armor cracked and fell to the ground, his horns curved up into a more bullish form and his face seemed to age. At last, the light display stopped and he smiled cockily. "Now, you can see why I'm so confident. In this form, my power level is over one million!"

Cypress cowered in fear at the awesome sight. She was certain this was the end. The two men who had identified themselves as saiyans were extremely powerful, but Heata was the most powerful being she'd ever encountered. He and his men had slaughtered her people and Heata himself had humbled her without breaking a sweat or even needing to show her this transformation. A fighting level of one million was more powerful than anyone could possibly imagine.

Suddenly the changeling's tail lashed out, extending across the room as it sought her out. Cypress flinched away from the pain that she knew was coming, hoping that it would be over soon.

But the pain never came.

Cypress opened her eyes and found the tip of the tail pointed straight at her, but other than waggling back and forth, it was no longer moving. Her eyes traveled a little farther along the tail and found that the young man next to her had a firm grip on the extendable appendage…and he wasn't even looking at it or straining to hold it in place. In fact, he looked slightly bored.

"Hahahahahaha!" Kanata laughed, "Just like before…you're nothing. A weakling like you is barely worth the effort of traveling all this way out here. If I didn't know that you and your men would spend the next decade taking innocent lives and making war with people who had no desire to fight you, I wouldn't have bothered coming here. But since I know what you'll do and who you'll hurt, I'm afraid I can't let you leave this room."

Heata glared at him as he continued to try and retract his tail, to no avail. Kanata continued laughing as he glanced over at the taut appendage that was being held right next to him. With a smug smile he lifted his hand and brought it down hard on the changeling's tail.

Heata screamed in pain as the saiyan's hand passed through his tail.

"In my timeline," Kanata whispered, "I had to remove my tail so you wouldn't know what I was and would give me what I needed to come back and fix things. The humiliation of having my ass feel like it was on fire is something I'll never forget, I'm glad I finally have someone who can sympathize with my pain."

The changeling's face twisted in anger. "It's time for you to die!" He roared as he retracted the remains of his tail and charged at the saiyan from the future.

The golden haired warrior sidestepped his enemy and brought his elbow down hard on the changeling's back.

Heata crashed to the ground in a heap, nearly out of the fight already.

"This…this is impossible," the warlord asked as he struggled to rise. "I am Heata…I am the mightiest warrior in this section of the galaxy…you should not be strong enough to do this too me!"

"Well," Kanata said with another chuckle, "you might have been the strongest fighter in this quadrant, but right now, you're not even the second strongest fighter in the room and my friend and I aren't even using a tenth of our true power."

Heata shook his head as he struggled to climb to his feet. It couldn't be possible! He was Heata! His family was far more powerful than any of the other changeling clans! It was his birthright to rule over others! How could a monkey be this powerful?

He had always suspected that Frieza had not really been defeated by a saiyan, but had actually made some sort of monumental mistake that had allowed one of the few surviving monkeys to take him out...probably in a sneak attack from behind or something. Never in his wildest dreams had he actually thought the saiyans could be this powerful!

There had to be a way out. Something he could say or do that would buy him the time he needed to crush these two monsters, but the question was: what?

Kanata kicked the changeling hard in the side, sending him flying back towards his throne, which shattered under the impact when he hit it. Heata groggily climbed to his hands and knees, but before he could get to his feet, Kanata was standing over him and smiling sadistically.

There was a loud cracking noise as the saiyan from the future's fists came down on Heata's back, breaking the changeling's spine as though it were a twig.

Heata cried out in pain and both Akira and Cypress cringed at Kanata's actions. The older saiyan, however, was oblivious to all that. He reached down and grabbed the wounded war lord by the throat and rose into the air, dragging the taller alien with him.

"You have no idea how glad I am that I get to kill you twice," Kanata hissed. "You made my life hell for over a decade!" He belted Heata across the face, nearly taking the alien's head off in the process. "You made me kill all those people instead of just helping me like I know you could have!" He swung his arm the opposite way and Heata's head again jerked to the side as blood spewed from his mouth. "You're nothing but a vile, pathetic, little snake...the universe is better off with you gone!" His hand came back and glowed as a ball of ki charged in his fist.

"Please...I...I surrender," Heata whispered. "Have mercy..."

"Mercy?" the ball of ki forced Kanata's hand to widen as more energy was pumped into it. "You don't deserve mercy!" an evil smile spread across the saiyan's face, "And even if you did, working for you turned me into someone who doesn't give it!"

"Kanata!" Akira had seen enough. It was one thing to attack people who could hurt you or at least hurt others; it was something else entirely to murder a helpless creature that was asking for mercy.

The saiyan from the future glanced down at his younger self, but the ball of ki continued to grow. "Stay out of this Akira. This doesn't really concern you."

Akira floated into the air and hovered next to his double, "You don't have to do this...he's beaten. He can't hurt anyone any more, with his injury he won't be able to reach the same levels of power that he could before...it's over."

Kanata's eyes turned back to Heata and they burned with hatred, "It isn't over until I say it's over!" His hand holding the ball of ki came rushing down on Heata, but at the last second Akira's hand shot out and knocked the older saiyan's hand off target. The changeling came within less than an inch of having the top of his head removed by the edge of the powerful energy attack.

Kanata glared at Akira for a moment and then let out a small sigh as he dropped the warlord to the ground. "Very well," he whispered, "If you're so adamant on letting the bastard live..."

Akira smiled, for the first time seeing some of himself in his future counterpart.

"...then I'll have to make sure that you're taken care of first!"

Before Akira could even register what had happened, his body smashed through what was left of the roof and tumbled end over end before plummeting to the city below.

ooo

Trunks and Icalla were slightly embarrassed at how late they were coming down from their bedroom. The demi-saiyan was pretty sure that if his mother knew that he'd spent the night with his soon-to-be wife, he'd never hear the end of it. She'd probably have the servants preparing the baby's playroom before the end of the day.

Fortunately, his mother clearly had other things on her mind...

"...completely uncalled for! Uubu is a sweet boy, you have no right to be so mean to him!" Bulma's scream echoed up from the dinning room.

"...a joke, Dad! If you weren't so kami-damned over protective you'd know I was just messing with you! I'm twenty! I'm not a little baby anymore; eventually I'm going to have a steady boyfriend!" Bra's voice drifted up to them just as loudly.

"...naughty Geeta! ...Ob good boy...Geeta bad!" the tiny voice of Kumo was nearly drowned out by all the yelling from the women, but in typical Son family fashion, he was still giving it everything he had.

"Um...suddenly I'm not so hungry anymore," Trunks whispered. "How about we just skip breakfast here and I take you out to eat somewhere?"

"Oh I don't know," Icalla smiled mischievously, "I might need to go down there and lend a helping hand to my future sister and mother-in-law."

"Trust me," the lavender haired saiyan replied, "they have things well in hand."

Icalla appeared to debate the idea for a moment and then said, "Well, okay...but I want to pay this time!"

"You paid last time," Trunks pointed.

"We could just stay here; Mr. Popo makes a pretty mean pancake."

"Like I said, you can pay this time," the demi-saiyan amended as he quickly scooped her up in his arms and leapt out a nearby window before she made good on the threat of entering the room where Vegeta was getting all he could handle from the two women in his life.

It was times like these that Trunks was amazed he even wanted to get married. All he'd known about married life since he was old enough to grasp the concept was that the wives yelled a lot and sometimes ran around with assorted blunt objects swinging wildly at their husbands, but for some reason, the moment he met Icalla he'd known that he'd take any physical or verbal abuse that she felt the need to hurl at him.

Fortunately - or maybe unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it - her attacks were far more subtle than his mom or Chi-Chi's, but at least - like the older women's - her love wasn't very subtle at all.

ooo

Kanata watched Akira fall from the sky and then turned back to the changeling who was climbing hand over hand towards the nearest exit.

"Oh no you don't, _my lord_," the saiyan said as he landed on the ground in front of Heata's outstretched hands. "The only place you're going is straight to hell!" He charged up a ki blast and pointed his hand down at the beaten war lord's head...and then his eyes registered what was standing not too far behind Heata.

Cypress's golden skin was slightly pale and her eyes were wide with alarm.

"_No one is beyond salvation Kanata..."_

In all of his short life, Kanata had only known two people who had ever woken him from the haze that settled over his brain when he got caught up in his rage. He was in love with one of them...and the other was Cypress.

The ki blast faded away into nothingness and Kanata's golden hair became black and dropped from its gravity defying style into its normal arrangement.

"Remember this day Heata," he growled. "If I ever find out that you have done anything to hurt another person ever again, I'll be back and I'll kill you in the most painful way I can think of...and I'm a pretty inventive person."

He stepped over the changeling and headed towards Cypress, who backed away from him in apprehension.

"I think maybe an explanation is a bit overdue," he said pleasantly, his voice in stark contrast from his gore covered body and the fact that only a few seconds earlier he'd been preparing to murder a helpless and defeated opponent.

Cypress looked from him to Heata and then nodded on autopilot.

Heata rolled on his back and lifted his head just enough to look at the two, finally he'd gotten a break. His hand lifted off the ground and a disk of incredibly sharp ki formed in his palm, spinning faster and faster as he put all of his energy into this final attack.

All of Kanata's focus was on Cypress as he lead her towards one of the many holes in the wall. He didn't feel the powerful attack being created behind him, an attack that probably wouldn't be able to kill him, but would slice through Cypress like a hot knife through butter. He didn't feel Heata use the last of his strength to hurle the attack at his two enemies. But he did see an angry Akira rise up from the city below and block the exit, a ki blast charging in his drawn back hands as golden light shown around him.

"Sei Kaze!"

Kanata couldn't believe that Akira would attack him like this, especially when it was likely that an innocent woman would be caught in the resulting explosion from the attack, but his disbelief didn't slow his reactions. With one smooth move, he pushed Cypress to the side even as he too leapt out of the way.

Heata's destructo disc was enveloped in the enormous ki blast and the mighty warlord only managed to gasp out one last, "Impossible!" before he too was overcome. The energy from the attack reduced the once mighty changeling to subatomic particles almost instantaneously.

Kanata was on his feet in an instant, ready to fight Akira to the death if that's what it took, but the younger saiyan was already powering down, a grim expression on his face. Kanata turned and looked at the spot Heata had once occupied and then looked back at Akira.

"You killed him," the older of the two noted.

"And you didn't," the younger replied tightly. He'd had every intention of coming up here and restarting his battle with Kanata, to hell with what Pan would think of it, but then he'd seen his future self walking away from the battle and Heata preparing to attack. He hadn't even thought about what would happen when he let loose his ki blast, but now…

Kanata thought about it for a moment and then realized something, "This is the first time you've killed someone."

Akira nodded and for a long time he didn't say anything. Then, in a strangely monotone voice, he said, "I'm going back to Earth. I don't want any part in your revenge on people you chose to work with."

Before Kanata could say anything, and even before he could begin to think of anything to say, the young man's fingers were at his forehead and he was gone.

o

o

A/N: Wow, I am so sorry that this is so ridiculously late. I was suffering from a bit of writer's block and a perhaps a bit of apathy…I just couldn't get myself to sit down and write this. In fairness though, this would have been online a day or two ago, but f a n f i c t i o n . n e t, was having some issues and first I couldn't get into my account and then I couldn't upload documents! sigh Anyway, hopefully that's over…I guess we'll see around next weekend, eh? Well, thanks for reading, sorry again that it took so long to update. I hope that, despite the lack of a thorough proof read, this came out at least half way decently. Please review and let me know what you thought.

ashlee: Well, I suppose that paragraph does make him sound like he's not completely evil, but then there's this part:

"_Thank you," the dark haired woman whispered, breaking the silent staring contest between the blood-covered Kanata and the eight other people who were crowded in the room._

_The saiyan glanced at her and then lifted his hand and blew her away with a ki blast before allowing the captain of the second team to lead him back to the space pods._

So he hurries to save her on instinct...but then he consciously chooses to kill her for no particular reason. I guess it could be argued that he was giving her a quick and painless death rather than let her possibly be tortured by the rest of the planet purging crew, but I like to think he was just being a jerk. I'm glad you liked the chapter and the Icalla/Trunks scene, I think I neglect those two sometimes, I just don't really know what to do with them during most of the chapters.

darksupersaiyan: Yeah, _Revenge of the Sith_ was a pretty good movie. The only problem I had with it was how quickly Anakin pledge his allegiance to Palpatine. I just thought that after all the wonderful build up in emotion and drama to that one point it was over too quick. Palpatine should have had to do a little more convincing (pointing out that Anakin joining him was the only way to save Padme or talking about the Mace Windu's disregard for the Code the Jedi are supposed to follow). Other than that one little scene though, I thought it was pretty much perfect.

Toni the Mink: Egads! You're right; she does have purple eyes in your pictures of her! I even went back and looked at the pictures before I wrote that scene...somehow I missed it. Sorry. Perhaps I'll write a flashback in which Icalla grows tired of having such interesting eyes and decides to have them surgically altered to the most common eye color possible. Eh, maybe not. As for Kanata getting together with Cypress...I'm afraid that he has a far greater destiny than a love affair with the past (or present) version of his purging crew's second in command.

Courtney: I must admit, one of my favorite scenes in Revenge of the Sith is when those little kids see Anakin walk into the room they are hiding in and ask him what they should do and the scene ends with his lightsaber extending and the kids' eyes widening...oh, it gives me chills just thinking about it. I also thought Hayden Christensen's acting was much improved, though I didn't think he did a bad job in Ep. II (anything is an improvement over Jake Lloyd. No offense Jake, but you were almost as bad as Jar Jar). I can see what you mean about Kanata and Anakin (thankfully I got past Akira/Kanata's "turn" before Ep III came out or I would have looked like I was copying it), they do bear a lot of similarities--most of which I didn't even realize until I saw the movie last week.

Francis Keenan: Yeah Kanata is sort of in the habit of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons (or at least going about doing it in the wrong way). I actually think I agree more with Kanata's logic than I do with Akira's (you can't sacrifice the many for the good of the few), but Kanata just does it in such an _evil_ way that it's hard to think of him as being right. I must confess that most of Kanata's kills are just an excuse for me to write some gore into the story when I get bored. Knocking the baddies out is all fine and good, but it's so much cooler to see someone finishing off his opponents with a bit of flare.

BballAnimeLover89: Cypress comes from chapters 40 and 41 (from your review it sounded like you didn't remember her), she was sort of Kanata/Akira's friend while he was working for Heata and the only person who survived Kanata's romp o' death against his teammates. I'm glad you liked the scenes with Trunks and Icalla, they were by far the easiest of the whole chapter to write.

Nova Flame: It's crazy how many reviews this story has, I really would have just been happy to crack the century mark (that was all I was really hoping for in my first one too). 700 will (assuming I can scrape together 4 reviews for the rest of the story) be awesome and 800 would just be unreal. I don't know if I'll actually get to 800, but regardless it's really cool to have people like my story enough to give me all those reviews. Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter as much as the last one.

Donkeykong27: I'm sorry you had a hard time visualizing the fighting in the last chapter…looking back on it, it wasn't some of my best work, but I guess it's too late now. Sorry this chapter took a long time to get out again, after you nearly died with anticipation waiting for the last one, I'd hate to hear what happened this time.

Anouk: Yup. The Z Fighters can't be the only ones who get a second chance in this timeline.

Rejhan: Kanata might be moderately evil and kind of a ruthless jerk, but he's not going to kill his only pseudo-friend from his timeline…even he's not that heartless. Sorry, if I got you daydreaming about that purple haired heartthrob, but…well I doubt you really mind.

Nicole: I'm glad you liked how the last chapter ended, I liked it too. Hopefully this one was just as good.

Queen Asinoe: Yeah, the instant transmission scene was one of my favorites too. Cypress was working for Heata because of slightly more…cowardly reasons. Like I said in this scene, her whole family and all of he people were killed by Heata and his men, but she was spared (after being defeated by Heata). In the last chapter she was in, she says that she begged for her life and Heata let her live provided that she worked for him. I'm glad you liked the bloody scenes…even if they do make your stomach turn.


	66. Waiting on a Wish

**Chapter 66: Waiting on a Wish**

o

Cypress blinked in surprise at the sudden disappearance of one of the strange warriors who had just popped into existence and then devastated Heata's forces with little or no effort. She turned back to the older of the two, "How did he...What...Who are you?"

"My name is Kanata and the rest I'll explain later," the powerful warrior replied, his eyes still on the spot where his young companion had vanished. "Right now, I need to know how long you've been here."

"A few months...four or five, I think."

The man smiled, "Thank kami."

Cypress was quiet for a moment as she seemed to debate whether or not she wanted to voice something running through her mind. Finally she said, "How do you know me?"

"That," Kanata replied, "is a very long story." He glanced down at a watch on his wrist, "There's still a little bit of time before I can take you home, do you have any credits?"

Her face was filled with confusion, but she nodded.

"Good, we'll go get some food then...you're paying." And without another word he rose into the air and floated out of the building.

Cypress stared after him, part of her wishing she could run away from this strange man who was most likely more than a little on the crazy side, but her curiosity was piqued and so she followed after only a moment of hesitation.

ooo

"Fine, fine, I won't kill the boy," Vegeta muttered when Bulma, Bra, and Kumo finally stopped yelling at him. "But," the Saiyan Prince added, "if I find he has done anything inappropriate with my daughter..."

"You will understand that Bra is perfectly capable of making her own choices," Bulma finished for him.

Vegeta ground his teeth, but didn't disagree with her. He didn't, technically, agree with her either, he simply didn't want to waste anymore time standing her and being yelled at.

"We're going home woman," he said at last, changing the subject away from something that would get him in more trouble, "I need to get back to the gravity chamber."

"I'll just get Akira to take me home," Bulma replied, "I wanted to talk to Kanata some more about the fuel problems the time machine has."

"Suit yourself." Vegeta walked to the door, stepped outside, and shot into the air, heading towards West Capital.

"Well," Bulma smiled, "that was entertaining." She lifted Kumo off the table and set him down on a bench, "Thanks for your help Kumo. Let's get you some food, huh?"

The little boy gave a loud, joyful cheer as Bulma began filling up his plate.

Bra started to sit down to eat, but before she could Bulma frowned at her and said, "Don't you think you have something more important to do? Like apologize to that poor, young man you nearly got killed a few minutes ago?"

Bra nearly pointed out that getting food was always the most important thing a saiyan can do, but in this case, her mother was right; Uubu did deserve an apology and an explanation. She sighed in resignation and started towards the door to look for him, but before she'd taken more than two steps she turned and grabbed a large handful of pancakes to take with her.

After all, she could eat and look for the young warrior at the same time.

ooo

Akira didn't bother to notice the strange twist in reality he created as he made the trip for Heata's palace to King Kia's planet, his mind was on other things. In fact, he was lucky he wasn't trying to visit someone he didn't know really well, if he had been, he might not have ever arrived at his destination.

Instant Transmission took a lot of focus, something the young saiyan wasn't always very good at, when making long trips in general or planet to planet hops in particular. King Kai had never really said what would happen if Akira lost sight of the ki he was aiming for, he'd simply said, "Don't do it."

Fortunately, Akira had known King Kai long enough to be able to sense the kai even in his sleep if he really wanted to and so he reached the tiny planet at the end of Snake Way without any trouble.

Bubbles and Greggory were chasing each other around on the grass, over the freshly cleaned and waxed car, and up and back down the tree under which Piccolo was meditating. The monkey and the insect seemed oblivious to all as they enjoyed themselves and Piccolo didn't even bat an eye when Bubbles scrambled over him in an attempt to speed up his ascent into the tree. King Kai stood not to far away with his arms behind his back and his antenna twitching every once in a while as he focused on something presumably happening with in his quadrant of space.

Akira looked around in confusion, unsure if anyone had noticed he was here yet or if they wanted him to remain silent so as not to break their concentration. The only noise was that of Bubbles and Greggory's playing, but even that was not a constant noise as the two had made their way towards the house.

"You don't look so good," Piccolo observed without opening his eyes. The sudden, unexpected noise made Akira jump.

"You aren't even looking at me," the young man replied after a few seconds.

Piccolo's eyes slowly opened and he gave his friend and former training partner a long look that bordered on being a glare. "You don't look so good."

Akira snorted and glanced back at King Kai, wondering why the ancient martial arts master was still ignoring him. "I'm fine."

"So, how did it go?" the namek asked. He was still in the lotus position, his hands on his knees and his body floating a few inches off the ground.

"Fine."

One of Piccolo's eyebrows rose just slightly as his lips turned up in an almost amused looking smirk and then his face returned to its usual eerily calm. "If you say so."

Akira's eyes narrowed, but he didn't take the namek's bait. "What's he doing?" he asked, hoping to stear the conversation towards something he actually wanted to talk about as he nodded in the direction of King Kai who still had not moved a muscle.

Piccolo shrugged, "His job I would imagine. Despite appearances to the contrary, he does actually check in on planets besides Earth."

Akira was puzzled for a moment and then asked, "How long does it usually take?"

"He has to keep tabs on over a hundred thousand worlds, it's not something he can finish up in a few seconds."

"Oh..."

"You needed to talk to him about something?" Piccolo closed his eyes apparently preparing to return to his meditation.

"I just..." Akira's voice trailed off as he realized he wasn't sure why he wanted to talk to King Kai.

"You want to know what he saw in your other self's head." It wasn't a question.

Akira blinked when he realized that Piccolo was not probing for answers, he was supplying them. And he was right. "Er, yeah. Yeah, I guess I do."

"I don't think that's something King Kai will give you, nor is it something you should really get."

The young saiyan was starting to get annoyed with his namek friend. Not only was Piccolo acting like some sort of a know it all, but he was doing it while floating in the air and pretending to meditate. "I didn't ask for your opinion," he retorted.

"No, but you'd be wise to take it," Piccolo replied without a hint of arrogance or superiority, which only served to make Akira all the more frustrated, "There are some things that it's better not to know."

Akira scowled, but did not argue.

A long moment of awkward (at least for Akira) silence spread out between the two before the young man finally whispered, "I killed someone."

"So? You've done that before," Piccolo said almost casually. "You killed someone in the fight you died in."

"That was different."

"How?"

"I didn't have a choice then...and I didn't really mean to kill him, I just didn't want him to hurt anyone," Akira bit his lip and looked at the ground. "I didn't have to kill Heata, I could have stopped him without killing him, but I didn't."

King Kai had explained who Heata was to Piccolo shortly after the two saiyans had vanished from the little planet and Piccolo had no doubt that Akira could have stopped the changeling without resorting to lethal force. But if Heata was anything like his cousin, then Akira had done the universe a large favor by taking care of the little lizard. "Why didn't you?"

"I don't know...I didn't think about it, I just reacted."

"What does this have to do with what King Kai saw in your older self's mind?"

"I just want to know if..." Akira's voice trailed off as he tried to think of how to say what he was most concerned about.

"You're worried you're more like him than you thought you were," Piccolo supplied for him.

"Quit reading my mind," Akira warned, irritated at the former kami's habit of finishing thoughts for him.

"I don't need to read your mind to know what you're worried about," Piccolo retorted, "I've known you were afraid of this from the moment I first saw the two of you together."

Another long moment of silence stretched out between the two and then Akira asked in a nervous voice, "Do you think I am? Like him, I mean."

Piccolo did not answer, his eyes remained closed and his breathing slow and regular. Finally he asked, "Do you think you're like him?"

"No!" Akira's hand went over his mouth as if trying to hold in the loud exclamation that had already escaped. "I mean, no," he said again in a quieter voice.

"Then why ask?"

Akira opened his mouth to tell Piccolo what a stupid question that was, but before he could his brain asked him the same question and he realized that he didn't really have an answer. Either he believed that he wasn't like Kanata, in which case why would he be asking other people if he was, or he believed that he actually was, in which case why say that he wasn't?

"Why are you so worried that you might be like him?" Piccolo asked while Akira was still mulling over the previous question.

"He's..." Akira tried to think of a different way of saying "evil," but nothing really definitive came to mind so he went with the less impressive, "He's not a very good person."

"Why do you say that?" the namek asked.

Akira got the impression that he was being led by the hand down a particular way of thinking that he might not have reached for a long time had he tried to work this out by himself. "He kills people."

"I killed people, am I 'not a very good person'?"

"Well no, but he kills people who didn't do anything to deserve it..."

"Like who?"

Akira sighed, "All those people that were working for Heata that he just slaughtered come to mind."

"And they didn't deserve it?"

"Maybe some of them might have," the young man conceded, "but what right does he have to be judge, jury, and executioner? He slaughtered them for things that they hadn't even done yet!"

"Heata was in the business of conquering planets to either sell or rule over. If they were working for him, they were there to kill people and make money off of it."

"Kanata worked for Heata in his timeline," Akira shot back, finally feeling like he could poke a hole in Piccolo's defense of Kanata.

"Why?"

"To kill people and make money off of it," Akira quoted with a smug look on his face.

"Why?"

"Why what?" the young man wasn't quite catching what his green friend was trying to say.

"Why did he want to make money, was there a reason?"

Well...yeah, he wanted to change the past, but that's not a good reason to go around killing people," the last part was an almost desperate attempt to defend his position from Piccolo's unending questions.

"You're right," Piccolo admitted bringing a smile back to Akira's face, "but when people are desperate, alone, and afraid they do stupid things." Akira's face fell again. "I'm not saying he did the right thing, but you have to admit that his goal was noble, even if - in his desperation to make things right – he did some very bad things."

"But...he tried to kill me," Akira felt lame even bringing that part up.

Piccolo opened one eye, glanced pointedly at the air above his young friend's head, and then closed his eye again, "You seem to have survived."

Akira scowled. Why did it seem like everyone always took Kanata's side?

"For the record," Piccolo added, "I like you the way you are and would rather you didn't become what he is; however, the two of you are not all that different in what you strive for, you just do things differently. He seems to take the more direct, and probably more violent, path so he can do whatever he needs to do as quickly as possible and to hell with the consequences. You, on the other hand, are willing to offer up second chances...even when they aren't deserved. You're like Goku in that way."

The young saiyan cringed at the last sentence; wishing people would not compare him to his pseudo-creator/benefactor. Still, Piccolo had a point. Kanata's heart had more or less been in the right place even if his methods were reprehensible. Not that that meant he and his older self were alike.

Nope, not in the slightest.

Any good goal Kanata had had was marred by the way he did things. He was evil and no one would be able to fully convince Akira otherwise.

Akira touched his hand to his forehead and vanished without getting to talk to King Kai.

ooo

Kanata and Cypress sat in a seedy bar on the other side of the city from Heata's palace for a long time, Cypress said very little while Kanata told her his story. When he was finished she sat and stared at him in disbelief.

"So…you're from the future?"

"A future, yes," he replied looking around the room for any soldiers he might have missed.

"And you came back in time to save your girlfriend?"

"Among other people."

"And you really think that I'm going to believe that my family and friends are all coming back to life?"

"Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant. If they died within the last year by the hand of Heata, they should come back to life any moment now," Kanata's eyes locked onto a tall alien sitting in the back sipping a drink through a grimy glass.

"I think you're insane," Cypress told him bluntly.

"You wouldn't be the first."

Cypress stood to leave, she'd heard what he had to say and, while he obviously knew her somehow and was clearly a very powerful warrior, she was ready to go. She didn't have time for lunatics, no matter how strong they were.

Before she could walk away, his hand shot out, and a thin red beam pierced the neck of the man he'd been eying for the last several minutes. The bar became deathly silent for a few seconds while everyone looked back and forth between Kanata and the dead alien he'd just attacked. After that, conversations resumed as though there had been no interruption, murder was not that uncommon in this part of town and certainly not in this particular bar.

Cypress, however, was not so quick to get over the kill. The beam Kanata had shot had passed only a fraction of an inch away from her shoulder and for a moment she'd thought that he was going to kill her. She took several quick breaths as she tried to calm her racing heart.

Kanata ignored her fear and discomfort, glancing down at his watch casually. "Well, that should be it. I think its time for you to go home."

He stood and touched a hand to her shoulder as his fingers went to his forehead. Before Cypress even knew what was happening, the bar faded away and stars raced passed her as they sped across the galaxy at impossible speeds.

ooo

Bra had nearly managed to swallow her handful of pancakes when she came across Uubu who was sitting on top of one of the palm trees that Mr. Popo kept in picturesque(TS) shape. The young warriors legs were crossed, his eyes were closed, and, aside from the faint ruffling of his black mohawk whenever a breeze happened to catch it, he was perfectly still.

"Uubu?" the demi-saiyan asked experimentally. He'd only fled the dining room a few minutes ago, certainly that wasn't long enough to start meditating, was it?

Whether he was actually in a deep meditative state or just ignoring her, he neither moved nor replied.

Bra waited for a moment, pursing her lips as she tried to think of what she should do. If it was one of the saiyans, she would have just bugged them until they answered, even her father wouldn't do more than put on a good show of being upset before getting over it, but Uubu was different. He was much quieter and more serious than the rest of the group, which wasn't really saying that much. Sometimes she wondered how the poor guy had put up with Goku's training when he was a child.

Perhaps that was why she liked him. He wasn't gruff like her father, or cocky like Akira and her brother; he was smart, but not in a book worm way like Gohan. He was just...different.

And nice.

And maybe a little cute...just a little.

But because he was different, he was much harder to read at times like this. The others would have understood that she was messing with her father's head and hadn't meant anything when she practically offered to sleep with him, but would Uubu get that? They'd known each other for a while, but they certainly didn't get to see each other every day. Mostly they met up whenever the world was in danger or whenever her mother decided that it had been too long since the Z Fighters last saw each other.

She debated her options for another few minutes and then decided to take a chance. If Uubu liked her the way he seemed to like her, then he was just going to have to get used to her interrupting his moments of silence.

"Uubu!" she called out.

Again he didn't move.

_'Oh, that is it!'_ the young saiyan fumed. _'If he thinks he can ignore a saiyan princess, especially one who's trying to apologize to him, then he has got another thing coming!'_ She rose into the air until she was hovering behind him. "Hey, I'm trying to say I'm sorry here!"

"What are you sorry for?" he asked quietly, not bothering to turn or even glance over his shoulder at her.

"Isn't that obvious?" she nearly yelled in exasperation, "I wanted to say that I was sorry for using you to mess with my dad's head!"

"Oh..." his voice trailed off and he was silent for a moment before he asked, "So...you weren't serious?"

"NO!" she quickly put her hand over her mouth when she realized how loud she was being and then in a slightly quieter voice she said, "No...I mean, I was joking about the stuff this morning. I'm not as innocent as my dad likes to think I am, but I'm not like _that!_

Uubu let out a small sigh and his shoulders slumped, "You mean...it was all just a lie?" There was the faintest hint of a quiver in his voice, as if he were barely holding back tears.

"Uubu..." Had she really not been obvious enough for him to see that she had only been joking? She hadn't actually thought that he would take her seriously, but apparently she'd been quite wrong.

The powerful warrior in front of her sniffled softly and then his shoulders began to shake as his body was wracked by silent sobs.

"Oh kami Uubu...I'm so, so sorry," Bra was feeling a little desperate at the moment. Uubu was a Z Fighter, they didn't cry! She didn't know how to deal with guys who were acting like this! The demi-saiyan looked around wildly, hoping to find someone who could help her calm Uubu down, but except for Pan and Hercule who were sitting near the edge of the Lookout, no one was outside. She really didn't want to involve Hercule in this mess. "Look, I, uh...I _do_ like you, Uubu. I really do. But I was just joking in there, you know, pulling my dad's chain? I just didn't want him getting in the way if you...eh, if we ever..."

She stopped as a strange noise reached her ears. The young man in front of her was still shaking, but the sounds coming from him were not the sounds of crying. "Are you laughing at me?"

Uubu fell out of the tree and landed flat on his back, his hands covering his mouth as he tried not to laugh too loud. He didn't seem to even notice that he'd fallen nearly twenty feet before hitting the ground.

Bra began to wonder if maybe her father had somehow given the young warrior a blow to the head somewhere between walking out the door and heading back to Capsule Corp. It didn't seem likely, but then she'd never known Uubu to pull pranks like this. Akira, Goten, and Trunks would all do something like this, but not Uubu, he was the quiet, shy one.

She dropped to the ground and knelt next to him. "Are you alright?"

Uubu's face twisted and contorted as he tried to regain his composure, finally he had recovered enough to take some deep breaths and smile. "So, you're saying I don't get to see if your bed was softer than mine?" It was an impressive testament to his will power that he managed to get that out before the damn broke and he burst into laughter.

Bra scowled at him for a moment and then looked up at something behind him and grinned, "Oh, hi daddy!"

Uubu was on his feet in a second, no longer laughing. He turned in the direction she was looking, but no one was there.

"It's not nice to mess with a Saiyan Princess like that," Bra whispered in his ear and then she leaned in and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. "Next time I won't just scare you, I'll kick your ass!" With that, she turned and headed back into the Palace, hoping there was still some food left.

Uubu's face turned bright red and he stood like a statue for several minutes until he was sure she had gone back inside, then slowly his hand reached up and touched his warm cheek were she had kissed him.

If he got a kiss out of the deal, maybe he'd find someway to tease her again...even if she did make good on the promise to kick his ass as well.

o

o

A/N: Eh, I'm not even going to bother apologizing for my tardiness again. This chapter wasn't fun to write (I couldn't even bring myself to proof read it I was so annoyed with it) and my week was rather crappy (stupid school and work), on top of that, I'm going out of town this weekend so I've been anxiously waiting for that so it's hard to focus on a chapter that I didn't much feel like writing anyway. Okay, now that my griping is done, I hope that someone enjoyed this chapter…I didn't but that might have just been because I had to write it. Next chapter should be the last of this boring stuff, then we can get back to killing slightly more important people instead of tying up loose ends. Please review and let me know what you thought.


	67. Return of a Dead Race

**Chapter 67: Return of a Dead Race **

o

_"WHAT IS YOUR SECOND WISH?" _

_A thought hit _ _Kanata__ and he quickly hurried to Mouri's side, "Ask him if he can do this: bring back all of the people in this timeline that have been killed because of Heata." _

_From the look on the Elder Namek's face, it was clear that the wish did not make a whole lot of sense to him, but he dutifully translated it to Porunga. _

_"HMM," the dragon voice was like a rolling thunder across the dark sky of New Namek, "THAT IS A VERY DIFFICULT WISH. I DO NOT KNOW IF EVEN I HAVE THE POWER TO RETURN SO MANY FROM THE GRAVE." _

_Kanata__ bit the inside of his cheek as he waited impatiently for the dragon to make up its mind about the feasibility of the wish. He was pretty sure that if he heard the words "that is beyond my power" one more time that day, the dragon would be a pile of well-done steaks before Pan or his younger self could even think about interfering. _

_"THAT WISH IS WITHIN MY POWER," Porunga finally said after what seemed like an eternity. _

_A new thought hit _ _Kanata__. "Wait!" he yelled up at the enormous creature, "There's something else I need you to add to that wish." He quickly explained the extra stipulation to Mouri who once again appeared confused. _

_"Why two days?" the leader of the nameks asked. _

_"The…organization that killed the people that would be revived by this wish might still be on the planet and it wouldn't do much good for us to wish everyone back and just have them get killed again, would it?" _ _Kanata__ asked somewhat crossly as though it should have been the most obvious thing in the world. "Now translate my wish." _

_If Mouri was put out by the rude demand, he didn't show it. He simply turned and translated the wish to the large dragon. _

_Again Porunga mulled over the wish and then said, "VERY WELL, THEY WILL BE REVIVED IN TWO EARTH'S DAYS TIME. WHAT IS YOUR THIRD WISH?" _

_Kanata turned to the two younger saiyans, who had been staring at him in confusion throughout the ordeal that was the second wish, "Do you know of anything? I've made the only wishes I can." He didn't bother waiting to hear their reply; he walked back towards the water that was calmly slapping against the nearby sandy shoreline and stared off into the distance. Things weren't going the way he'd planned, in fact, this whole adventure was a nearly complete failure so far, but it seemed that there were some unexpected things he could get out of it. Perhaps in the end it would only be a semi-failure. _

Kanata still was pretty sure his time traveling mission was mostly a failure, but things did seem to be looking up. He'd gotten to sort of kill the Arlean, which was definitely something. And this timeline's Pan was still alive, another plus. Cypress would be reunited with her family and wouldn't go through the horror of working for Heata, a big plus. But his Pan was still lost forever, and in the end that outweighed any good that he managed to do in this timeline.

"I take it your little adventure was a success then?" King Kai said as the saiyan from the future and the slightly-golden skinned woman appeared on the tiny planet.

"What the hell just happened?" Cypress asked in disbelief as she looked around at her strange surroundings and tried to figure out how she'd gotten here and what she'd just seen as she traveled with Kanata via Instant Transmission.

"Heata is dead and so are most of his men," Kanata replied to King Kai, ignoring the young woman's question. "On their own, what few survivors there might be aren't a threat to anyone. I'm pretty sure all of his elites were at the palace…none of the others have enough power to keep the army united. They'll probably all just go their separate ways.

"Very well," the kai started to return to staring off into space and looking in on his quadrant when he stopped and looked at the curly red haired woman who was standing with Kanata. "You picked up a date while you were killing a warlord?"

"She was a…friend in my timeline, I felt like I owed my Cypress to not kill her."

"Well, that's very generous of you," the kai replied. "Are you taking her back to Earth?"

"She's going home. The rest of this stuff doesn't concern her."

Cypress didn't much appreciate being left out of a conversation that was about her, but before she could say so, a small monkey leapt onto her head and spring-boarded into a nearby tree. She turned in surprise and at that moment a flying insect bumped into her and then zoomed into the tree as well calling out, "Sorry," as he vanished.

"I need your help finding her planet," Kanata informed King Kai. The kai nodded and the saiyan placed his hand on his shoulder. A moment later he stepped away and smiled, "Thanks."

Before Cypress could ask about the monkey and the bug with haloes or about the strange little planet, or anything else for that matter, Kanata had grabbed her by the hand and the two of them had vanished once again.

ooo

Akira reappeared on the Lookout a few feet from the spot where Uubu was rubbing his cheek with a ridiculous grin on his bright red face.

"You look like Christmas came early this year," the young saiyan commented.

"Er…" Uubu quickly removed his hand from his face and did his best to hide his blush. "Yeah, I…uh…"

One of Akira's eyebrows rose considerably as he watched his friend struggle to find something to say. Whatever it was that Uubu was trying to hide, it was something he was slightly embarrassed about or at least talking about it was embarrassing.

"Don't worry about it," the saiyan said with a small smile, "You can tell me later." He walked off before Uubu even had a chance to thank him for understanding.

Akira took all of five steps before he was nearly tackled by Bulma who had just stepped out of the Palace.

"Just the young man I was looking for," she said with a smile as she grabbed hold of his arm. "I need a lift back home and Vegeta…uh, felt like leaving early."

The way Bulma said it left little room for debate. "Yeah, sure. Just let me go say goodbye to Pan and we'll go."

The aqua haired woman smiled and nodded, pointing over Akira's shoulder to where his girlfriend was still speaking with her grandfather at the edge of the Lookout. "I'd kind of like to get started on a project as soon as possible…so don't take too long."

Akira turned and jogged over to the dark haired young woman.

ooo

Pan sighed as she watched understanding and a little bit of dread spread over her grandfather's face. At least now he knew that Akira hadn't sexually assaulted her in any way, shape, or form. Unfortunately he also knew that in another timeline his daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law had all be brutally murdered by a clone of her boyfriend…which would naturally lead him to think that he needed to be around much more frequently in case something like that ever happened in this timeline. Exactly what he planned on doing if a clone of Akira, or any other Z Fighter for the matter, appeared was beyond her, but it was nice that he worried for her safety – even if it was a little annoying having him fuss over her all the time.

"Uh, Pan?" a very, very welcome voice called out from behind her.

Pan spun and wrapped her arms around Akira, pleased to see that he was okay – apparently her fears that he and Kanata had had another fight were unfounded after all.

Akira's eyes opened wide in surprise at the sudden embrace, but then his arms encircled her as well as his nostrils filled with her scent. He couldn't help but notice the slightly suspicious look Hercule shot him before the balding former champ muttered an excuse to leave and stepped away from the young couple.

"I was kind of worried when you weren't around this morning," Pan confessed. "Where did you go?"

" Kanata wanted to…show me something."

"What did he show you?"

Akira looked at the ground and said, "Nothing too important, I'll tell you about it later when we have more time."

Pan read the lie immediately, but did not press him since he'd promised to discuss it with her later. Whatever Kanata had shown his younger self, it was important or at least something important – and unpleasant – had happened. A little bit of the haunted look that had been in Akira's eyes for so long was back…and Pan couldn't help but be disappointed.

Akira must have sensed her face fall even though he wasn't looking at her, because he quickly said, "Why don't I come find you tonight and we'll talk. There's a lot of things I should tell you."

Pan brightened at this. "I hold you to that, you know. If you don't show up, I'm going to hunt you down."

A smirk tugged at the young man's lip, "Is that a promise?"

Pan lightly smacked him on the arm and then pushed her self up on her tip toes so she could kiss him without him leaning down. "Definitely a promise," she whispered. As she took a small step back from him she noticed Bulma standing not too far away, trying to look like she was admiring the morning sky and not snooping. "We have an audience."

Akira glanced over his shoulder and then turned back to her, "I think that's my cue to leave. I'll see you tonight though."

"Don't be too late…or I might have to make you spend the night."

Akira thought for a moment and then asked, "Just tell me what time is too late and I'll show up a few minutes after that."

Pan kissed him again, "I'll let you know if you were too late when you get there." There was a mischievous glint in her eye that told Akira pretty much any time after two in the afternoon would probably be declared too late…if he wanted it to be.

He reluctantly turned and scooped Bulma up in his arms and shot off into the sky in the direction of Capsule Corp. while Pan headed for the Palace to see what her family was up too and maybe to figure out what was going on with Uubu and Bra who'd be acting very strange lately.

ooo

At that exact moment, another goodbye was being said to another Akira, or more specifically, The Other Akira.

"I…I don't know what to say," Cypress whispered as she stared in awe at her the town before her which was filled with very confused and very happy people.

Her people.

Her race which had been wiped out at the hands of Heata and his men was now back, safe and whole on her home planet. It was like something out of a fairytale.

Cypress's mother was a very religious woman and had raised her daughter on tales of the Almighty. Miracles were common place in bedtime stories when Cypress was a little girl, but as she'd grown older and come to realize the power that she was capable of wielding, those miracles, and Jouten along with them, had gone from believable to fairytale. They were the things of her childhood, as a warrior she had no real need of them.

But now, staring at her people back from the dead, Cypress was a believer once more.

"I don't think I can thank you enough," she said.

"You don't have to thank me," Kanata replied, "Just keep your people safe."

"I will try," she promised, though feelings of doubt crept in. After all, she'd failed before and with beings as powerful as Kanata and Heata in the universe, what chance did she have if something that powerful attacked again.

"If you are ever in need, send a message to planet Earth or try contacting King Kai. Akira and the other Z Fighters will help you in any way they can."

"What about you?"

Kanata smiled, but it was a bitter sweet smile, "My work in this timeline is done. As soon as I can I'll return to my own version of the future and face my destiny."

Though he didn't say it, she knew he intended to die once he returned to his time. Whether it was at the hands of his enemy or by his own hands, he had decided that his life had nearly run its course.

"You could stay here," she whispered, "You could find your peace with me…and my people. You don't need to go back and die." Though he was undeniably cute, at that moment Cypress wasn't thinking the way her future self had about the saiyan, she only wanted to see the tortured soul who had saved her and her race find some sort of happy ending.

Kanata looked into her eyes and said, "I might be able to find some peace here, maybe even a reason to keep on living, but I don't deserve that and somewhere deep down I would always know that I failed to avenge the woman I love…that her killer was roaming free while I went on with my life." His face hardened and he said, "I'm going to kill that bug with my bare hands, that's the only way I can redeem myself before my death."

A long moment of silence stretched out between the two of them before Cypress finally said, "Then I wish you luck on your journey. May Jouten guide your steps." She stepped forward and kissed him gently on the cheek, "And thank you again for what you have done, you will always be remembered as a hero among my people."

She stepped back and watched as, without another word, he touched his fingers to his forehead, closed his eyes, and vanished.

ooo

Bulma sat in front of her computer chewing on a cheap plastic pen while a complex string of equations and output readings flashed across the screen.

Kanata had claimed that her fuel for the time machine was too weak, that it couldn't open a large enough hole in the fabric of the space time continuum for the ship to travel through, but every simulation she'd run said otherwise. Of course, that was all just based on theory and equations, her team of scientists hadn't actually tried to open any holes in space-time as of yet, that was scheduled to happen sometime next week.

She bit into the plastic casing of the pen thoughtfully as her brain ran through a list of possible errors in her calculations that could result in that sort of problem. Most likely the trouble was simply that space-time was either thicker or at least sturdier than she'd envisioned and consequently harder to pry open long enough for a ship that size to pass through. Which would explain how Mirai Trunks' Bulma had been able to do it, she'd been working with a much smaller ship and thus didn't need the kind of power output that Bulma's time machine required.

She pulled the pen out of her mouth and began typing at lightening fast speeds as her mind chewed its way through the problem. She fully intended to have this mystery solved before she went to bed that night…unless Vegeta came in and _persuaded_ her to take a break.

ooo

Akira sat in the shower scrubbing himself as hard as he could with the soap. For some reason he just couldn't seem to feel clean.

He had taken a life that did not threaten his own or even that of anyone he loved. Heata was broken and no longer a threat, but Akira had killed him…just as Kanata would have. That was what troubled him more than anything else, certainly Heata had deserved to die, both for the crimes that he had committed and those that he would have committed had he not been stopped, but he was defeated and no longer a threat, only a warrior like Kanata would have used deadly force against such an opponent.

He had no way of knowing that later that night he would go and tell Pan everything. He would tell her about the scores of enemies Kanata had slaughtered, he would tell her about the argument the two of them had gotten into over Kanata's desire to kill a defeated Heata, he would tell her that it was not Kanata but he himself who had killed Heata even though he was sure he could have simply stopped the changelings final attack, and he would pour out his fears about what his attack against Heata said about him as a person.

And then Pan, as only she could, would help him though it. She would soothe his fears and reassure him of his own goodness. By the end of the night he would feel better, not completely sure that he had done the right thing, but better none the less. Of course part of the reason he would feel better would probably stem from the fact that Pan informed him it was extremely late and that she didn't trust him to try and fly or even Instant Transmission his way home so he'd have to spend the night with her (never mind the fact that the sun had barely set an hour before this).

He had know idea, as he stood in the shower and tried to scrub unseen filth from his body that this would be the night that he truly became addicted to spending the night with Pan in his arms, nor that he would wake up to Zori and Stacy clicking snap shots of the sleeping dark haired couple for "posterity." And he certainly didn't know how funny it would be to watch Pan chasing her roommates around the apartment demanding to film from that camera so she could destroy it before her father, or worse: her grandmother, found some of the pictures they had taken.

No, he didn't know any of those things and so he continued to rub his skin raw with soap trying to get clean even though the only person who could help him was already on her way back to her apartment.

ooo

An hour or so after Akira left to see Pan, Capsule Corp was visited by the future version of the young man, carrying with him a sample of fuel from his time machine. He had little doubt that in a day – perhaps even less if she was really on the ball – Bulma would have synthesized enough for him to return to his timeline so his long journey could at last come to an end.

Vegeta did attempt to persuade Bulma to come to bed that night, but with the delivery of the fuel, Bulma's breakthroughs were happening far to quickly for her to even consider going to sleep or doing anything else in her bed for that matter. By morning she had managed to make a small amount of the new fuel, but with the formula finally corrected, it was only a few hours before she was able to rig up a machine in her lab that could make as much of the stuff as she wanted.

At long last Kanata was going to get his shot at revenge.

o

o

A/N: This was another 'ugh' chapter that I barely proofread, but (as you could probably tell by the end of the chapter) all this boring stuff is mostly behind us now. More apologies for making you guys wait so long (hopefully a few of you are still out there), I've still be struggling with writer's block (not helped by how boring this chapter basically had to be) and school and work aren't leaving me with a whole lot of free time. With any luck, now that I'm more or less nearing the end of the story (and the requisite fighting that shall occur there) I'll be a little more motivated to write which should clear up that writer's block. At least that's what I'm hoping for. I'm also going to try to get back to updating on Fridays…but I guess we'll see next week how well that goes. Anyway, thanks for the read and for the reviews and most especially for the patience with my slow updates.

Courtney: You were pretty close about the last wish ( Cypress's people coming back was a big part of it though Kanata didn't know that at the time). I'm glad you didn't hate the last chapter; hopefully this one wasn't too bad either.

Anouk: Yes…something happened in the last chapter and in this one as well…unfortunately that's about all that can be said about them. Still, they moved the story forward enough that I could make a leap forward in time without skipping over to many pseudo-important things.

Francis Keenan: I'm glad you liked the last chapter and you were in no way a nuisance with your long review (I like long reviews…short ones too for that matter, but long ones usually mean that I've done a good job with the chapter). I'm actually glad that you mentioned that someone could step in and fill the void in Heata's little army left by his death, I almost forgot to address that until I read your review. I also agree that Kanata isn't justified in killing people for future crimes that they would have committed…but at the same time, they really would have committed them. Sort of a Minority Report (excellent movie) kind of thing I guess.

kaizer: Thanks for the review. I'm glad you didn't think the last chapter was too bad, as I said, this chapter will hopefully be the last before the interesting stuff starts up again.

Toni the Mink: Sadly I fear that it is not the pressure that made me hate the last few chapters…it was the crappy job I did on them (and the fact that I wrote myself into a hole where I had to write them). I honestly have no idea if Bra can fly…I suppose she probably can, being Vegeta's daughter and all she'd surely pick up a skill as cool and useful as that, but meh, it's not important. Anyway, I'm glad you liked the Bra/Uubu scenes, I tried to put a scene with either Bra and Uubu or Trunks and Icalla in here, but just couldn't make it happen. Hopefully my random scene creativeness will return as the story starts actually going somewhere and I'll be able to work in a few scenes with all the different couples (or semi-couples in Uubu and Bra's case). Did you get your Yamcha/Bulma fic finished?

Nicole: I'm thinking less than ten chapters. Probably something in the neighborhood of five, but once I get into the battles that might change if I'm feeling creative (or feeling apathetic for that matter).

Nova Flame: Sorry I haven't reviewed your newest chapter. I got the email and will eventually read it, I've just been kind of in a nonreading, nonwriting mood of late…in fact I've mostly been in a pointless video game kind of mood (ah, Lego Starwars, how I love ye). As for your question about Akira and the twist in reality thing, no that wasn't anything interesting. It was mostly just a reference to the last time he made the trip between King Kai's and Heata's planets when I said something about the universe bending in on itself so he and Kanata could travel at higher speeds. Nothing important, just talking about Instant Transmission is all. I agree with you about the Piccolo conversation being a bit of a rehash of other conversations that have come before, but previously Akira was in a position where he felt entirely in the right and didn't think he could be like Kanata at all, in this last conversation his confidence in this area was pretty shaken. Regardless, I felt like it needed to be there, but didn't feel the need to go over it again with Pan (in part because your review helped me see that a simple overview of the conversation would suffice).

Queen Asinoe: Yeah, in chapter 48 after killing the second of the three clones Kanata, Akira, and Pan get to make some wishes, but one of them wasn't disclosed at that time. No worries about not remembering, it seems like a long, long time ago to me too.

Rejhan: Everyone seemed to like Bra and Uubu, I guess I need more of them in my chapters since it appears to be a cheap way to get praise…not that I would do that of course…well, maybe. Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter as well.

BballAnimeLover89: Thanks. I hope you liked the new chapter as well.

donkeykong27: I'm glad you liked the last chapter. I've read through it again and it isn't quite as bad as I originally thought, but I'm still not completely satisfied. I think when this story is done I'll have to go back through both of my stories and do some touching up here and there or at least make it so that thoughts and telepathy are shown the same way throughout…stinkin' Quick Edit always changing the rules on me!

Everyone else: Hopefully most of you are still around and enjoying the story, thanks for reading!


	68. Return to the Future Part I

**Chapter 68: Return to the Future Part I**

o

The rays of light gradually made their way down the tall buildings of West Capital as the golden sun rose above the horizon and chased the darkness away. As the sunlight reached the yellow dome of Capsule Corp, a lone figure stood atop the building and watched what could be one of the last sunrises of his life.

_"Explain? There's nothing to explain!" the hatred in her voice that seemed to intensify with each word caught Akira off guard. For a moment he'd let himself forget just how badly she had been hurt by his apparent betrayal. "You killed your whole family, you killed all of our friends, you killed my mom and dad...you even killed Kumo...You, you loved him...h,he used to do a little dance whenever he heard we were going to baby-sit..." tears of grief and anger filled her eyes, though she still wouldn't or couldn't look directly at him. "You even killed me...I was nothing to you, was I? Just something to play with until you were ready to murder us all."_

_"No, ple—"_

_She wasn't listening to him anymore. "You seemed so good, how could you not be with Grandpa's soul? But you're not...you're not like Grandpa, you're just some sort of a twisted, sick freak."_

_"Pan, I didn't...I wouldn't...I love—"_

_"NO!" she screamed, "Don't you dare say that to me! Not now, not ever. You don't know what love is, to you it's just another tool to manipulate with, just like I was," her eyes finally locked onto his. "I hate you," she whispered harshly and, though she had said and thought it before, this time she really meant it._

Kanata reached up and touched the thin scar that ran along his cheek, the mark that Pan given him the last time he saw her. His eyes narrowed just slightly as the sunlight found them.

He wondered if Pan would understand why he'd done everything he had in the last decade. Would she realize that he had killed all those people, had thrown out his childish notions of good and evil, had given himself completely to his quest for vengeance all because he was lost without her? Or would she despise what he'd become? Had King Kai told her the truth of what happened on Earth? Kanata almost hoped not, he didn't want her to feel responsible for his actions, it would be easier on her if she just hated him...maybe it would be easier on both of them.

If she still cared for him and he was condemned to Hell for all of eternity...losing her twice would be a punishment far worse than any pain the flames inflicted upon him.

The saiyan from the future closed his eyes and let the sun bathe him in its early morning warmth, doing his best to put such painful thoughts and memories out of his mind. There was nothing he could do about it now anyway, his eternal fate was sealed and had been from the moment the Arlean took Pan from him. The only real question left to decide was whether or not the Arlean would survive the rage Kanata was about to unleash upon him.

"You're up early," a gruff voice commented from behind.

"I haven't gone to bed yet," Kanata replied without opening his eyes.

"Good," there was a hint of a smile in Vegeta's voice, "then you won't need any extra time to wake yourself up before we spar."

The saiyan from the future felt a small smile tug at him lips, perhaps it would be good to get in a little bit of exercise before the next leg of his trip began. It also occurred to him that the last time he'd sparred with Vegeta, he'd nearly killed him as the Arlean's voice screamed in his ear. It would be nice to have a different memory of his last fight with the Saiyan Prince and if nothing else, it would let him say goodbye, something he hadn't gotten to do in his timeline.

"You really think you can keep up with me, old man?"

Vegeta scowled, "I'm going to enjoy wiping the floor of the gravity room with your face."

And with that the two men leapt off the five story dome and headed inside.

ooo

A light flashed before Akira's closed eyes, causing him to flinch involuntarily and to slowly begin to awaken.

Another flash of light and Akira's mind was dragged away from whatever pleasant dream he'd been having and back into reality.

His whole body stiffened as his senses began to come back to him one by one. First, his sense of smell informed him that there was a very pleasant smelling _something_ nearby, but he wasn't awake enough to remember what that smell meant. Second, his sense of touch informed him that not only was he very comfortable and warm, but the source of the warmth was snuggled up against his chest and his hand was resting on something which felt distinctly _fleshy_. And then his ki sense kicked in and he was aware of two very large power levels some distance off.

Instantly Akira was wide awake and on his feet. Or at least he would have been on his feet if said feet – as well as his arms and legs – weren't tangled up in the source of the warmth and the sweet smelling fragrance: Pan.

Akira's sudden attempt at movement caused the young raven haired girl to also wake up and as her ki sense was easily as strong as his, she also tried to rise before she'd properly disentangled herself from her bedmate. Needless to say neither saiyan made it very far on their first attempt to get out of bed.

There was another flash of light, this time accompanied by an audible clicking noise.

"And here I thought the teddy bear pajamas went out of style when we were kids," a familiar voice called out while another began chuckling. "You'd think that a couple spending their first night together would wear something a little more...grown up."

Pan looked down at her pajamas and blushed. "Shut up Zori!" she yelled at the young blond girl who was standing over them with a digital camera in hand, happily snapping away.

"Well, at least Akira seems to like them," the other occupant of the room added, ignoring her roommate's blush.

It was at that moment that Pan noticed Akira's hand was where it probably ought not to be – at least not when her roommates were standing right in front of them.

CLICK

"Oh that's a good one!"

Akira's hand slid out from under Pan's pajama top, it had been resting comfortably on her stomach until the two's ill-conceived attempts to rise, at which time it had...moved.

"Sorry," the young man whispered sheepishly, as his face burned with the knowledge of what his traitorous hand had touched. In his embarrassment the two powerful ki signatures were completely forgotten

"You I forgive," Pan replied. "Them..." she was out of bed in a flash and chasing after her fleeing roommates, "I'm going to kill!" She easily could have caught them in a heartbeat, but – while she might have been a little annoyed – she was playing it fair and not using any ki enhanced abilities...yet. "Get back here you two!"

"Oh come on Pan," Zori called out as she dove over the sofa, flopped onto the floor and then scrambled to her feet before the demi-saiyan could catch her, "it's for posterity." She hurried to the dinner table and used it as a barrier against a woman who could destroy the entire building without breaking a sweat.

Pan feinted going left around the table and then put on a small burst of speed as she headed right. Zori wasn't fooled by the fake, but she also wasn't nearly as quick as Pan. The raven haired girl was about a half second away from tackling her roommate to the ground when Zori – in her desperation momentarily forgetting that they were 'playing' with a rather expensive piece of equipment – tossed the camera to Stacy who took off running down the hall that led to her and Zori's rooms with Pan close at her heals.

The chase might have gone on for quite sometime (unless Pan decided to use some of her physical advantages), had Akira not seemingly stepped out of thin air and snatched the camera out of Stacy's hands the moment she rounded a corner.

"Wha—" the red head managed to get out before Pan also rounded the corner and tackled her, not realizing that the game was essentially over.

"Hey! No fair! How'd you do that?" Zori asked as she joined the other three.

"I'm sneaky," Akira replied as he winked at Pan and then began cycling through the pictures on the digital display. Pan's two roommates had gotten off several shots before he and Pan had awoken…Vegeta would not be pleased if he heard that Akira had let his guard down for so long. "What were you going to do with these?" he asked.

"We told you, they're for posterity," Zori replied in her most earnest (and thus least trustworthy) voice.

"Yeah, I heard…what were you going to do with them?"

"I don't know, maybe put them in a scrapbook for you guys or something."

"And perhaps email a couple of them to Mr. Satan and Chi-Chi," Stacy giggled and then put her hand over her mouth when she realized that she'd actually said it out loud.

Zori rolled her eyes, "Nice."

Pan glared at them.

Zori glanced from her annoyed roommate to a bemused (and perhaps slightly sweating) Akira and then back again. "We wouldn't have really done that," she said, "we might have…um, implied that we would do it, but we wouldn't really do anything to get you guys in trouble!"

"I can handle trouble from my grandpa," Pan replied with a small growl. "It's the _encouragement_ from grandma that I don't want to deal with!"

Akira couldn't help but laugh at that. And as he did, he let his guard down for the second time that day and in a flash the camera was out of his hand and two shrieking girls were running like mad while one demi-saiyan was ready to take off after them.

Before she'd taken two steps, however, Akira's arms were around her waist. "Thanks for last night," he whispered, "and for this morning."

Pan smiled, "Thanks for being honest with me…and for staying with me last night, I sleep better when you're beside me."

"I think I need to go check on Vegeta and…" his voice trailed off as he realized who it was that Vegeta was sparing with. "I think I should head home," he finally said.

"Okay," she leaned up and kissed him softly on the cheek. "I love you."

"I love you too," he replied as he kissed her forehead. He took a step towards the door and then paused, "Don't play too rough with them, okay? Some of the pictures on there are kind of cute; I'd hate to see them destroyed."

And then he was out the door and rocketing into the air while Pan turned and chased after her two fleeing roommates.

ooo

A tired – but happy – smile floated across Bulma's face as she watched another another canister of the fuel for the time machine get topped off and then set aside by the large **hydraulic powered robotic arm** as another empty canister took its place and began being filled. It had taken all night and the willpower to resist Vegeta's attempts at distracting her (it was almost as if he could sense when she was trying to concentrate on something other than him and took it upon himself to recapture her attention), but the fuel was finally ready. It would only take a few more hours for Kanata to have his way back home...if he actually chose to leave.

A part of Bulma almost hoped that he would stay, though she knew Akira would be displeased (to say the least) if he had to put up with his future self for the rest of his life. Still, the young man who was her future self's (or was it past self's? It gave Bulma a headache trying to think of what to call the alternate timelines' versions of herself) son had had a hard life and when she looked at him she couldn't help but feel those motherly instincts trying to kick in. He was a grown man now, but she still wished she could hug him as she would if he was still her Akira. If he stayed, perhaps she could help him with whatever it was that had caused that haunted look that appeared in his eyes when he thought no one was watching.

Perhaps she would see what Vegeta thought about asking Kanata to stick around. Not that her hard-headed prince knew anything about the emotional damage that the future version of their adopted son might have endured, but he could probably tell her if Kanata would consider staying...Vegeta tended to understand the Z Fighters far better than she did, even if she hated to admit it.

She stood and started to leave the lab in search of her husband, thinking that he would probably be sulking after being shot down last night, when suddenly a small explosion rocked the building.

_'Apparently he's taking a different route to working out his frustrations,'_ Bulma thought as she headed up to the master bathroom so she could take a shower, _'I wonder which one of the boys got stuck sparring with him this time...'_ Of course she'd find out later, whoever it was would most likely either be spending some time in the rejuvenation tank or at the very least would be in a sour mood until lunch was served.

Bulma had long ago discovered that the presence of saiyan genes in a person's blood meant that enough food could always overcome any foul mood they might be in.

Another small explosion caused the great dome building to shake once again.

'_I'd better start cooking as soon as I get out,'_ Bulma mused as she slid out of her dirty clothes and stepped into the shower, enjoying the way the hot water soothed muscles in her back and neck that had been aching all night.

ooo

"Come on old man, I know you're better than this," a long, blond haired Kanata taunted as he ducked under one of Vegeta's punches and delivered an uppercut that lifted the Saiyan Prince off his feet.

His small victory was short lived; however, as Vegeta flipped in the air – his waist length blond hair momentarily surprising the younger man as it hit him in the face – building up speed and kicked Kanata in the face sending him flying across the room and slamming into the wall with such force it nearly knocked his breath out.

Nearly.

"Ha!" a half second after Kanata hit the wall a ki beam leapt from his palm and met a charging Vegeta head on. The resulting explosion sent Vegeta to the ground and shook the Capsule Corp dome for the seventh or eighth time in the last half hour. It would have happened more frequently than that, but Vegeta had decided that ki blasts were off limits during the first four hours of their sparring.

Kanata watched for any movement from this timeline's version of his adoptive father, but saw none. Slowly he approached, his eyes still locked on the still form of Vegeta, the older saiyan didn't appear to even be breathing but his ki could still be felt quite clearly.

Another step closer and he was within Vegeta's range.

The instant his foot came down on that final step, the Saiyan Prince's leg swept out, trying to take Kanata's feet out from under him. Kanata leapt over the initial attack, but Vegeta was on his feet in a heartbeat, his fist flying at the younger saiyan's face. Kanata dodged to the side, taking a glancing blow across his cheek that he hardly even noticed, and then drove his knee at Vegeta's chest.

Vegeta blocked the attack by placing one hand on Kanata's rushing knee and using the momentum of the saiyan from the future's attack to flip himself over the younger man's head. His fist shot towards the unprotected back of Kanata's head, but before it could get there, Kanata ducked and spun sending his own attack Vegeta's way.

For the next forty-five minutes the two raced about the room in an intricate dance of deadly attacks and quick-thinking counters. Neither could get the advantage on the other, and neither took more than superficial blows to the body.

Finally Vegeta called it quits, pointing out that it would be time for lunch soon and that Bulma most likely wouldn't let them eat if they were covered in sweat and blood.

"If you're getting tired, you could just say so," Kanata said with a grin as Vegeta shut down the gravity machine. "There's no dishonor in admitting defeat to a superior fighter."

Vegeta glared at him, "You won't be my superior until I'm dead and buried, _boy_. Even then your advantage would be minimal."

Kanata's grin turned into a full blown smile, the first he'd really had since…he couldn't even think of the last time he'd smiled like this. Even when he was sure the Pan of this timeline was safe from the Arlean threat, he still hadn't let this smile form on his face because in the back of his mind he'd always known that she wasn't really _his_ Pan.

Maybe it was because he had actually missed Vegeta's gruff, I-Couldn't-Care-Less attitude, or maybe it was because his memories of his fight with Vegeta on King Kai's planet weren't as bitter as what he remembered of the last time he saw his Pan, but for some reason, he could really enjoy this time with Vegeta.

"_I hate you."_

And then the smile faded.

"What's wrong?"

Kanata blinked in surprise and turned to the owner of the voice. Since when had Vegeta cared?

"Perhaps lunch can wait," Vegeta went on. "I think maybe you and I should talk."

Kanata was tempted to walk over to the saiyan prince and feel his forehead to see if he was feverish. Tempted, but not enough to act on it; he didn't really feel like having his arm ripped off.

The saiyan from the future was silent for a moment, debating whether or not he really wanted to discuss anything that Vegeta was likely to ask him about, but in he decided that a small confessional would do him good before he went back to his timeline to meet his fate.

ooo

Akira's flight back to Capsule Corp. had been slow and relaxing, since he hoped that if he gave Kanata enough time he would leave, that was clearly not the case as he could still clearly feel his older self inside the gravity room with Vegeta. Having no desire to ruin his day by seeing the twisted individual he could have become, Akira went in search of food and/or other family members to enjoy it with.

The kitchen was empty, sadly, but on his way out he literally walked right into Bra who was apparently also in search of food.

"Hey watch it!" the young woman growled as she rubbed her forehead where Akira's nose had collided with it.

"Yob atch it!" Akira replied as he held his nose which had come out the worst when it hit her. After a few seconds he removed his hand and made several funny faces as he tried to get his nose to stop aching.

Bra glared at him for a few seconds and then started laughing, "I guess mom was right, I do have a hard head!"

"Yeah, no joke," Akira muttered, finally ceasing his face making and resigning himself to have to live with the pain for a few minutes.

"Was there any breakfast left in there?" Bra asked, nodding in the direction of the kitchen.

"Nah, doesn't look like anyone's eaten anything in there all da…" Akira paused as a thought dawned on him, "Why are you looking for breakfast so late?"

"I, uh, just got up," Bra replied with a small blush. "I was out kind of late last night."

"Uh-huh," Akira replied, clearly waiting for the rest of the story to come out.

"I was at the Lookout for a while yesterday…and then Uubu offered to fly with me on the way home…and it kind of took a while…a long while…" her small blush had turned into a sea of red that had completely covered her face, clashing horribly with her aqua colored hair.

"It doesn't take that long to get here from the Lookout," Akira said slowly and then his eyes widened as realization struck. "You're kidding me…"

"We didn't do anything bad!" Bra hissed at him, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the gravity room with an expression of alarm on her face. "We just…talked…er, mostly."

"You and Uubu?" Akira, completely oblivious to her now as he tried to wrap his head around the idea, was still talking fairly loudly, far louder than Bra would like him to at least. "Since when?"

"The day before yesterday…mostly…maybe the night before that too."

Akira felt like he needed to sit down or something, the idea that two of his friends had gotten together in some form or other while he was dealing with an evil version of himself from the future, fighting clones of himself that wanted to kill all of the Z Fighters, killing some alien warlord on a distant planet, and trying to repair his relationship with Pan just seemed wrong somehow.

"Does Vegeta know?" he asked after a long moment of digesting the news.

"Sort of," Bra replied uneasily. "He…uh, didn't really approve of the idea so much…and that was when it was just theoretical."

"So it's not theoretical anymore?" Though it didn't seem possible, Bra was blushing even more now in an obvious answer to his question. Akira let out a small whistle, "Well, at least I'll have something to distract him with the next time he gets mad at me," he joked. Bra didn't look like she thought it was very funny. "Alright, alright, I won't say anything," he conceded.

She stared at him for a moment longer and then smiled and nodded, "Come on, we'll start cooking and I'm sure the others will show up sooner or later." She headed into the kitchen and paused half way through the door, "If not, well, more for us, right?"

ooo

Kanata told Vegeta everything. He repeated several things that he had told the Z Fighters the night before they battled the clones and the Arlean only this time they were complete with all of the details. He told Vegeta about his fight with Goten and Trunks, about his guilt over their deaths because he had been the one who had weakened them enough for them to be killed. He told of his last conversation with his Pan, about the words she had said in her ignorance and of the scar she had left him. He told of his time under Heata, of how he had slaughtered whole planets worth of people – occasionally saving a few, but doing so less and less frequently as the years went on. He told Vegeta of Cypress and how she had – in a small way – saved him from completely losing himself in his grief. He left nothing out of the story of his vengeance against Heata and his men, nor did he skip over his fight with Akira and how close he'd come to killing his younger self. He did not hide the fact that if he had hoped to win Pan away from Akira and in that way be reunited with the woman he loved, even if she wasn't the woman from his timeline. And he told Vegeta about what he and Akira had done the previous morning, and how good it had felt to be allowed to slaughter Heata's men a second time.

And when it was all over, Vegeta didn't have any advice to offer, no words of consolation. That was not his way. There was nothing that could be done to change Kanata's past, it was what it was and Vegeta wasn't going to cry tears over the life that had been wasted. The younger man had made plenty of mistakes, but if he was strong and smart he would learn from them on his own, he didn't need Vegeta to hold his hand.

The Saiyan Prince simply looked at Kanata and nodded, his face neither full of condemnation nor compassion. "Come on; let's go see if Bulma has lunch ready yet," he said and then he walked out the door without another word.

Kanata stared after him, his smile slowly returning. Whether Vegeta knew it or not, he'd given the saiyan from the future exactly what he needed, a listening ear that wouldn't condemn him (he was more than capable of doing that himself) or cry over the horrors that he'd endured (he didn't deserve their tears). A few seconds later he followed after the man who had always been a larger than life father figure to him.

ooo

About an hour later, Vegeta, Bulma, Bra and Akira (both the present and future versions), as well as Trunks and Icalla – who had arrived shortly before the meal was finished – were at the table eating the meal that had been partially prepared by Akira and Bra and then rescued by Bulma and several servants who had come running when they smelled smoke in the kitchen. Some of the chicken was a little on the 'crispy' side, and a good portion of the rice tasted like charcoal, but overall it was a good meal. The only real problem was the unsettling amount of tension floating back and forth between Akira and Kanata.

Through some unspoken agreement, neither version of Akira said a word to the other, nor did they even acknowledge the other's existence. It was something of a cease fire more than a truce, and the rest of the table could feel it, though only Vegeta could completely understand what was happening.

When lunch was finally finished, Bulma decided that it was time to give Kanata the news that she had managed to manufacture fuel for his time machine and to offer him the chance to stay with them if he wanted to. She had discussed it briefly with Vegeta just before they sat down to eat, but he had refused to say anything other than, "Do what you want."

"Kanata," Bulma said as all eyes turned towards her, "it took all of last night and a few…sacrifices (Vegeta grunted in annoyance, but no one noticed), but I've managed to synthesis a fuel that will give you the right amount of power to go back to your own timeline…if you want to." The saiyan nodded his thanks, but before he could say anything Bulma pressed on. "I wanted to ask you though, if you would consider staying here with us."

Kanata looked shocked, "Stay here?"

"I know it's not your timeline and that you don't completely see us as the same people you knew from your time, but…" her voice trailed off as she tried to phrase the next part as gently as possible, "but I don't want you to go back to a future where you'll be alone…" again her voice trailed off, this time because she didn't know what else to say.

"I'm sorry," Kanata replied quickly, knowing he had to decline before he became too tempted, "I can't stay. I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't k—" he paused and reconsidered his words, "if I left things unfinished in my timeline. I'll leave first thing tomorrow morning, after I've had a chance to say goodbye to everyone."

"But—" Bulma was prepared to argue her case very strongly, but before she could, Vegeta's hand was on her arm.

"He has made his decision, woman," the Saiyan Prince said gruffly, "honor it."

Bulma looked from her husband to Kanata and back again, both men had an expression on their face that said they would not be moved from their stance. She sighed in defeat and nodded.

Kanata stood and stepped away from the table, "Thank you for lunch Bulma, Bra…" his eyes flickered in Akira's direction, but quickly moved on. "I'll be back for dinner if that's okay with you Bulma (she nodded with a sad smile), but for now I think I could use some time to myself before my journey." Without another word he lifted off the ground and headed west through the air.

Akira watched him go for a moment and then, without bothering to explain what he was doing, he followed.

o

o

A/N: Well, obviously Kanata didn't get to his timeline yet, but there's always part II, mostly I this chapter just got longer and longer, but never reached the point where he gets to leave. I should (I'm pretty sure) get him into his timeline next time or at least I should be as far as him leaving. On the plus side, this chapter was done pretty quickly and painlessly, so I guess I'm coming out of my writer's block. Anyway I hope that you enjoyed it or at least weren't too bored with it. Please review and let me know what you thought.

Queen Asinoe: Well, I'm glad I could make your weekend...it sort of made my weekend to finally get that stupid chapter out of the way (at least I didn't have to spend all of my free time trying to gear up to write it). I've found that with writer's block I mostly have to just sit down and do it and stop procrastinating, but it's that much harder when the chapters are kind of boring to write...it's just easier to play video games unfortunately. Oh well, hopefully I'll be past all that for the rest of the story.

Nova Flame: I kind of figured she probably could and I might have even said she could in past chapters, I just couldn't remember off the top of my head. Regardless, it isn't terribly important as far as this story is concerned. I completely agree with you that I need to get back to the action, hence the small fight scene in this chapter. For some reason action scenes seem to help me focus on the story more easily, I tend to get bored when I'm just writing relationship stuff and Akira/Kanata/Pan/whoever moping around because the world isn't quite going their way.

Rejhan: I'm glad you liked the end of the chapter, it was one of my more inspired bits of writing in recent chapters I think...a little different from how I usually write things as well, but it seemed to work (which is nice since it was completely unplanned until it started forming on the paper for me). As for Kanata's fate...well...you'll just have to read and find out...sorry.

Francis Keenan: Interesting. I've only watched a few episodes of Shaman King, it seemed pretty good, but I'm usually out playing basketball when it's on. I have seen something with the X-Laws though and I think your comparison is pretty accurate (though Kanata's goals are a little more self serving than theirs are, perhaps that's why he doesn't see himself as a hero). Maybe I'll have to start recording Shaman King on Saturdays...

kaizer: Thanks, glad you liked it.

SSJ4 GOGETENKS: I'm glad you like the story so much, though you make me blush with such high praise...this is nothing but a humble fan's attempt at paying homage to the wonderful work of **Akira Toriyama**.

Courtney: Yeah, I know it's important to tie up loose ends, but the problem is when I get bored I lose motivation and don't update as often as I should. Still, the chore is done and now I can start writing more fight scenes (which usually helps me get into the story a bit more). I personally have been waiting for Kanata's revenge as well; hopefully it will all come together when I finally start writing it.

Brian: Glad you liked it. Was it you that sent the email? If so then I hope my reply answered your questions.

Anouk: I'm glad.

ashlee: Wow, I'm glad you liked it so much.

jadawolf: I appreciate the review. I myself am guilty of reading the occasional story and not reviewing (generally when the story already has tons of reviews I figure that I won't say much that hasn't already been said), though I generally try to at least review at the very end so the author knows that I liked his/her work. You're certainly under no obligation to review, but I really, really appreciate hearing from everyone (review addiction can be a difficult hunger to feed). I'm glad you like the little Jouten dimension to the story; it was kind of a random inclusion into Kanata and Cypress's parting words to each other just before he went back in time, but somehow it has started to become more important as the story progresses. As for Kanata's redemption, that's a tough one to call...he HAS been getting better (slowly but surely) mostly because he's been back with his friends and family (even if he tries to say they aren't really his), but once he's back in his timeline anything could happen.

Nicole: Actually 'awesomely' is a word. It's the adverb form of 'awesome.' I must confess that I had to look that up. When I saw your review I said, "Awesomely isn't a word? Crap, I use that word all the time!" So I just had to check and make sure I didn't sound like an idiot every time I said it...anyway, you're right, it was a bit boring to write, but I got through it and that's what's important. Now I can start working my way towards the end of this ridiculously long story and then I can finally rest easy knowing I don't have to write anymore if I don't want to! Yay!

Toni the Mink: You and me both. This wasn't the quickest update, but hopefully it wasn't too long of a wait either.

Dan: I can't wait either…unfortunately I can't seem to get him there! Oh well, another chapter or so and he should be back to his own timeline. Thanks for the review.


	69. Return to the Future Part II

**Chapter 69: Return to the Future Part II**

o

Pan lay on her bed with the recaptured digital camera in hand and a smile on her face (Stacy and Zori were nearly passed out in front of the TV after running so hard to get away from the barely-trying demi-saiyan). Akira was right: a couple of these were pretty cute.

The picture she was currently staring at featured a close up on her and Akira, both of them had small, happy smiles on their faces as they enjoyed the blissful sleep that could only come from sleeping next to the one you love. Pan couldn't seem to bring herself to stop looking at the picture, her eyes just kept going over it, drinking in its every detail.

Though she liked everything she saw, the one detail she found herself coming back to again and again was the look of peace on Akira's face. It was something she hadn't seen on him in a painfully long time and it was a relief to find that it had finally returned.

After who-knows-how-long, she forced herself to cycle back through the pictures for the hundredth time since she'd snatched her prize from Stacy's hands. Most of them were the same essential picture over and over, they were all at slightly different angles, and some were zoomed in more than others, but in all of them she and Akira were snuggled close together in the middle of her bed, the covers almost perfectly straight as though neither had moved an inch during the night. It brought an even bigger smile to Pan's face to think that she, who was a very 'active' sleeper and tended to wake up on the floor or near the foot of the bed as often as not, had remained so still in Akira's arms.

Her mind drifted back to how safe and contented she'd felt as Akira wrapped his arms around her, kissed the base of neck and told her he loved her before falling asleep. She hadn't been able to sleep right away, so she'd just lay still and enjoyed the small tickling sensation of his slow, even breathes upon her skin and the steady thumping of his heart against her back. Every time she'd slept with him seemed to be better the time before, of course that wasn't saying much given that the first time he slept beside her was after she'd found him half out of his mind covered in deer blood and the second time was filled with a lot of tension due to her 'announcement' that she would have sex with him if he wanted her. Regardless of what she had to compare it to, this time had been perfect – at least to her – it had just felt so natural, so incredible the way her body seemed to fit against his and most importantly of all – despite the audience they'd had when they awoke – it had felt so right to wake up next to him knowing that he'd been there all night with her and hadn't left before she awoke as he had the previous two times. She didn't think she'd be able to sleep very well without him anymore, she _knew_ she didn't want to have to sleep without him. As she lay on the bed and pondered these things, a new thought occurred to her; someday she might _have_ _to_ sleep without him because someday he or she might be gone…forever.

It had already happened once, after all, not in this timeline of course, but in Kanata's time they had been torn apart by an enemy who had so thoroughly manipulated them that her future self had told Kanata she hated him. The look of pain in his eyes when he revealed this piece of information to her was almost more than she could bear, and the thought of her Akira having that same haunted expression in his eyes was heartbreaking.

She knew, of course, that her friends and family lived dangerous lives. Or at least their lives became dangerous every time a new enemy decided to come looking for a fight, but in her lifetime they had never really lost, her Grandpa or Vegeta or Akira or someone was always there to snatch a miraculous last minute victory from the jaws of defeat. Still, they _had_ lost, or at least they would have in the original timeline.

It was a sobering and scary thought, but it also gave her a new appreciation for the time that she and Akira had together.So as she lay on her bed gazing at the pictures taken of her and Akira, she couldn't help but wonder ifhis feelings had changed as well know that he knew the future had not turned out so well for them, and if so, how would it affect their relationship or, more importantly, the future of their relationship?

ooo

At that exact moment, Akira probably would have preferred to be contemplating a new found appreciation for the time he spent with Pan or what the future held for them, but instead he was chasing after his future self. A future self who had just said he would be leaving to go back to his own timeline soon. A future self that Akira didn't particularly like. A future self that Akira would be perfectly happy to have out of his life.

The obvious question then – and the one that Akira was spending most of his time thinking about – was why on Earth was he following this man that he despised?

For the life of him, the young saiyan didn't have a clue as to what had made him take off after Kanata, but here he was just the same, slowly closing in on the man he could have become as they traveled farther and farther in a northwesterly direction from West Capital.

Mountains and plains, rivers and lakes sped by as the two saiyans raced past them at supersonic speeds. Finally Kanata began to slow and descend, heading for the desolate island known as the Yunzabit Heights.

ooo

"So what was that all about?" Trunks asked as Akira and Kanata went from being tiny specks on the horizon to disappearing completely – even to the ki enhanced vision of the saiyans.

All eyes turned towards Vegeta, who scowled a little, but did not offer any answers.

Bulma pondered for a moment and then said, "I hope he wasn't offended about me saying he'd be all alone…I mean, I know he wanted to bring uh, his version of us back, but…he must know that…"

"He knows," Vegeta replied, "and he's accepted it as much as he ever will."

"Then why…"

"You just offered him something he could never allow himself to accept, no matter how tempting it might be." Vegeta's eyes gazed off into the distance in the direction that Akira and Kanata had vanished, "Give him time and he'll return to say his goodbyes before he goes off to meet his fate."

The rest of the members of the family were quiet until Bra said, "You make it sound like he's going to die or something."

Vegeta merely shrugged, "Read what you want into it, he's going to face the one who killed us…and all the weapons he has amassed over a decade."

"You mean there will be more clones like what we saw the other day?" Trunks asked incredulously, "And he's going back to face them alone?"

Vegeta did not bother answering the obvious.

"He can't do that!" Bulma yelled rising to her feet and staring her husband in the eye, "He'll be throwing his life away for nothing!"

The Saiyan Prince's eyes remained focused on the horizon as he said in an eerily calm voice, "No, he'll die trying to get the one thing that has kept him going for the last ten years: vengeance."

"But we're…they're dead! What good could it possibly do to fight a battle he can't win?" And then realization struck Bulma so hard that it dropped her back into her seat, "He wants to die…he's committing suicide. He doesn't even care if he kills the Arlean, he just doesn't want to live anymore."

"No," Vegeta replied quietly, "He does want the Alrean dead, but after that nothing else matters. Once his enemy is defeated he will have achieved the only mission he has in life anymore and what point is there in going on when you have nothing left to live for?"

There two children and one future daughter-in-law, sat in stunned silence at Vegeta's words, but Bulma – naturally – had more to say.

"It isn't fair! He doesn't need to do this! Just because he doesn't want to live…just because he wants to see them all that much sooner he's decided to kill himself?"

Vegeta lowered his eyes and turned an intense gaze upon her so she would know this was the end of the discussion as far as he was concerned. "He knows he won't see them when he dies, he's lived the last ten years of his life for vengeance and once he has it he will die and let the chips fall where they may…he's prepared himself, he's known that it would come down to this from the moment the dragon couldn't grant his wish. This is how he wants it to be. Honor his sacrifice."

"But—"

Bulma didn't get to finish her sentence as Vegeta walked back into the house without another word. The aqua haired woman stared after her husband for a moment and then whispered, "He's not making some noble sacrifice, he's just giving up."

ooo

Kanata landed and looked around. It had been ten years since he'd been here, but it looked just as dreary and forlorn as he remembered it. The wind still whistled and howled as it made its way over and around the many hills and plateaus that made up the entire island. Little wisps of snow and dust were picked up by the near-continuous breeze and tumbled across the grey-green grass. It was as if the island was lonely and depressed, unable to even attempt to produce colors that would make the landscape more pleasant. It was the perfect place to come and feel sorry for one's self, or to get away from all human contact and just think. Kanata had done both here a decade ago and now he'd returned to solidify his resolve. He could not stay here, he didn't deserve it, not after the way he'd failed Pan and his friends, not after the crimes he'd committed.

He just needed to remember what it was like to hold her blood soaked body in that dirty warehouse, to remember his rage and hold it close. His time in this timeline had softened him some, he could not let it continue to do so. He could not become weak again. Could not allow even the thought of forgiveness for himself or his enemy to enter his mind. He hadn't killed the Arlean in this timeline, he'd hesitated and even allowed a moment of doubt to cloud his judgement, but that was a thing of the past

It had to be.

He would be strong now. He would kill without remorse because he was a saiyan of old, his soul was doomed to eternal damnation regardless of the choices he made now, there was no need to show pity to his enemies. Goku had warned him of where this path would take him and he'd been right, but Kanata could see the end of the road now, he just had to hold true to his course a little longer. A few more days and everything would fall into place. Those that he'd killed while working for Heata would get there justice when he was sent to Hell, Pan and the rest of his friends would be avenged, the Arlean would meet his end, and Kanata would be able to burn in peace knowing that he'd done what he promised he would do. He might not have been able to bring back his Pan, but he'd avenged her, he'd made sure that before he breathed his last the one who hurt her was dead…and in the process he'd created a timeline in which things went the way they were supposed to, a timeline where Akira and Pan could live happily ever after. Speaking of which…

"Go away," Kanata growled as Akira dropped out of the sky. The saiyan from the future had noticed he was being followed at about the half way point of his journey but nothing could have prepared him to see that it was his younger self who'd given chase.

Akira ignored him, looking around at the desolate surroundings for a moment before he said, "Can you beat them by yourself?"

"Who?"

"The Arlean and how ever many clones he's made since you've been gone. There will be at least five more, right? Because we fought them on the mountain."

Kanata turned and stared out over the bleak landscape of Yunzabit Heights towards the horizon. "It doesn't really matter...as long as the Arlean dies, nothing matters."

Akira closed his eyes and looked away. "You're an idiot," he whispered.

Kanata's eyes shifted in the younger man's direction for a fraction of a second and then quickly went back to staring at whatever it was he found so interesting about the horizon. "You have no idea what you're talking about," he snorted with contempt. "You think that because you can stay here with your friends and family that I should be allowed to live happily ever after as well...but I can't, I have to go back, no matter the cost. You have no idea what it's like having everything torn away from you. You have no idea what I've gone through." He paused and looked at the ground before adding, "If you're lucky, you never will."

For several long minutes, neither said a word and then Akira began to almost chuckle.

"I have told you that I hate you?" the young man asked.

Kanata looked over at him in confusion and then said, "You've made you're feelings pretty clear."

"Good, because I don't want you to think that I'm here saying any of this just for you...or that I've gained some sort of new appreciation for everything you've been through. No matter what you say, you're a self-centered asshole who was too scared and too weak to deal with the breaks life gave you." The younger man could see a small tremble of rage pass through his future counterpart, but he pressed on, "You took your grief out on innocent people who had nothing to do with Pan's death, all so you could be happy...it didn't have anything to do with her." He let out a small sigh and frowned as he said, "I suppose that means that I'm like that too or at least the potential for it is there.

"Is there a point to this?" There was a tiny hint of barely controlled murderous rage in Kanata's voice.

"The point is that I don't like you...but I think you should stay."

Kanata's eyes widened in shock for a second and then closed again as a pained expression flashed across his face. "I can't."

"Why not?" Akira asked. "There's nothing left for you in your timeline…you could just stay here and find some peace and maybe even a little happiness.

"I can't be happy until he gets what he deserves for his crimes. I have to kill him…there needs to be justice."

"You mean vengeance."

Kanata smirked and his eyes seemed to light up with anticipation, "Yes, vengeance. He murdered Pan, I can't just let that go...even if everything I did since then has been selfish, and maybe it has, I still cannot let her murderer walk free. He doesn't deserve to take another breath of air."

"You'll die," Akira pointed out. "If he had five new clones in this timeline almost finished, imagine how many he could grow in a decade! He could have hundreds of clones maybe even thousands waiting for you when you get back!"

"Possibly," Kanata conceded, "but I don't have to beat his clones, I only have to kill him. The clones are only the tools he used against us, I don't really care about them, but the Alrean..." several bolts of electricity crackled around him, "...the Alrean must pay for what he's done, even if it costs me my life!"

"Then I'm going with you."

The words were out of Akira's mouth before he even realized what he was saying. Both men's eyes went wide at the exact same time as identical looks of shock appeared on their faces.

"What did you say?" Kanata finally asked, not sure if he could believe what his ears had heard.

"I want to come with you," Akira repeated, still a little uncertain, but growing more confident in his desire with each passing second, "You'll need me, whether you like to admit it or not."

"You're not coming," there was little room for debate in Kanata's voice, but that didn't stop Akira for even a second.

"You'll die without me there."

"If things are as bad as I think they are, I'll die even if you are there...and you'll die too."

Akira opened his mouth to continue his argument, but before he could, the older saiyan held up his hand and added, "There are no dragonballs in my timeline, if you die there, you stay dead...and Pan loses you forever."

That – Kanata noted with a touch of pride – shut the young man up.

ooo

Bulma had begun making phone calls shortly after Kanata and Akira had left. All of the Z Fighters would be there tonight; all of them owed the young man from the future a debt they could not repay, so they would say their farewells and wish him luck on his next journey. It was the least they could do.

She didn't tell any of them what he would face when he returned, that he was most likely returning to his timeline to die more than anything else, but all of the warriors seemed to instinctively know it, each of their voices became somber when she told them that he was returning to his timeline in the morning and they hastily agreed to be at Capsule Corp for a farewell meal with the departing saiyan.

When all of the calls were made, she went into the kitchen, called her personal chief to help her with the meal, and started cooking. Anything she could think of that Akira had ever commented on liking was prepared and set out for the meal, she didn't really know what Kanata's favorites would be since he was ten years older than her Akira, she just figured if she made as much as possible, he'd find something he really enjoyed.

Had she sat down and thought about it, she probably would have found it slightly strange that she was quickly heading towards grieving for the loss of a son when she would not actually be losing anyone. Akira would still be there after Kanata had left, but still her heart naturally seemed to lead her down this path and she had no choice but to follow.

She didn't actually even notice what was happening to her until the meal was almost done and the guests where beginning to arrive. She was cutting the last of the vegetable platter she would use for hors d'oeuvres when she noticed her hand was beginning to shake so badly she could scarcely hit the carrot she was aiming for. She set down the knife immediately and closed her eyes against the pain that she could feel building up inside of her.

"…_what point is there in going on when you have nothing left to live for?"_

The damn broke and Bulma slid to the floor as tears rained down from her eyes and sobs wracked her body.

It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair that after everything he did for them he was just going to go die! It wasn't fair that he'd had to go through this in the first place, all alone! It wasn't fair that her family was attacked again and again until finally someone had found a way to not only kill her husband and her as well as two of their children, but to leave the sole survivor so broken that he didn't want to live anymore! It wasn't fair that he wouldn't just stay here and enjoy peace and happiness the way he was meant to!

It just wasn't fair!

"He's made his choice woman," Vegeta's voice broke through her tears as he stood over her. "He is a saiyan warrior, he has the right to decide what he does with his life, and we – who owe him so much – have an obligation to honor his decision."

Bulma glared up at him, though tears continued to fall and her body continued to shake. "Don't tell me he has the right to chose something like this!" she growled, "He's throwing away his life for nothing!"

"He doesn't feel like it is nothing," Vegeta's voice was shockingly, and infuriatingly, calm. "Our opinions on the subject don't matter."

"I am his mother! My opinion matters!"

"His mother is _dead_, woman! And he will most likely never see her again."

Bulma's breath caught in her throat as she stared at her husband who stood as still as a statue and watched her with a blank face. "How can you be this callous?" she asked at last, "How can you not care about him…he's Akira."

"He is not _our_ Akira," Vegeta replied evenly, turning away from her as he did. "He is Kanata, not Akira." The saiyan paused for a few seconds and then added, "I never said that I didn't care about him or that I approved of his actions. I simply accept the fact that he can choose to do what he wants. He is a man and, more importantly, a saiyan warrior, he deserves to be allowed to make his own choices."

Bulma's mouth hung open in shock. What Vegeta was doing was contrary to every motherly instinct in her body. Her son – whether from this timeline or any other – was in danger, it was her duty to protect him.

"You won't be able to persuade him to stay," Vegeta said softly. "All you will succeed in doing is spoiling your last few hours with him. You can either have him leave with the found memories of those he cares about that were denied him in his time, or you can have him leave feeling awkward and frustrated that you were unable to see what he himself feels is obvious. Which would you prefer?" And then the Saiyan Prince left the kitchen.

Bulma sat there on the floor for several minutes as she made a decision that she hated being forced to make. Finally she rose to her feet, wiped her eyes on her apron and finished cutting the veggies – her hand perfectly steady on the knife – before carrying them out to the table which was already overflowing with food.

ooo

The two nearly identical saiyans had stood on the wind swept hilltop of Yunzabit Heightsfor a long time without saying a word. Actually, Kanata was rather surprised that Akira was even still there. He'd thought that the young man would leave when he saw that there was no way he was going to argue his way onto the time machine or at least when he saw what he would lose if he were to accompany his older self back to the future.

"She loves you, you know," Akira whispered at last, startling Kanata out of his thoughts. "Not just the Pan in your timline, but this one..._my_ Pan loves you as well."

Kanata had no clue where this was going, or why Akira would even bring up something that no doubt annoyed him to no end.

"When I said I hated you, I meant it," Akira continued, "I don't exactly want to see you die, but I doubt I'd mourn your death much either. But Pan loves you. I told her a lot of what I know about you and she still loves you."

The young man grew silent again and Kanata turned and faced him, a mixture of confusion and disbelief on his face.

Finally Akira said, "I want to help you because she loves you. You're important to her and that makes you important to me, even if I despise you."

Once again the two men lapsed into an uncomfortable silence and then Kanata said, "We should get back to Capsule Corp, Bulma will be waiting for us and most of the others are already there." He started to bring his hand to his forehead.

"You haven't given me an answer," Akira said quickly before the man could vanish.

"If you really want to come and throw you're life away…so be it," Kanata whispered and then he was gone.

Akira remained where he was for several seconds, wondering if he had been right to offer his assistance to a murderer like Kanata. It left an unpleasant sensation in his stomach, but at the same time, he couldn't see things going any other way. After a minute or two of contemplating it, he decided that he probably wouldn't figure it out anytime soon. A second later he had touched his forehead and was gone.

ooo

"I'm a do it my silf!" Kumo yelled, jumping up and down and grabbing at the beach ball Pan had started blowing up for the little boy to entertain himself with.

The young woman smiled and handed over the half inflated ball. Kumo placed his mouth on it and blew hard, just as Miss Pan had been doing. Unfortunately, he lacked the finesse that she had and the ball quickly expanded to its full size and then...

POP!

...it exploded.

Kumo's eyes went wide in surprise at the sudden developement and then - without moving his body even a fraction of an inch - he glanced in Pan's direction to see if he was in trouble.

"Whoops," the young woman said with a smile and a soft giggle, reassuring the boy that he hadn't done anything wrong.

"Hehe," Kumo giggled as well, rubbing the back of his head and looking exactly like his father and grandfather had when they were younger, "I sorry."

"Well, I guess we should go see if Bulma has anything else that you can play with...cause it's either that or gravity training with Vegeta for you!"

"Yay! Geta!" Kumo cheered, obviously missing that the option of training with Vegeta was supposed to be the less desirable of the two choices.

Pan took the little boy's hand and led him into the house in search of any round objects he could kick around without breaking too quickly.

It was just as she and Kumo were coming back outside with one of Trunks' old soccer balls that Kanata arrived followed a few seconds later by Akira.

"Kanata, you're just in time," Pan said with a smile, handing him the soccer ball, "Kumo is itching for a game and I bet he'd get a kick out of playing with you."

"Er..." was all Kanata managed to get out before Pan had grabbed Akira and led him away. The saiyan from the future looked down at the ball in his hand and then at the little boy who was eyeing him uncertainly. "Uh...so I guess it's just you and me, huh kid?"

"'kira?" the little boy asked. He'd seen this new person a few times, but hadn't really paid much attention to him until now.

"Um, sort of, but not really," Kanata replied awkwardly. "It's...uh, complicated."

The toddler stared at him for a moment longer, seeming to contemplate the older saiyan's answer, and then suddenly he leapt forward, snatching the ball from Kanata's hands and took off as fast as his short, little legs would carry him yelling, "Can't get me!" as he ran.

Kanata just stood where he was, for some reason unsure of whether or not he should actually try and get the little boy. It had been ten years since he'd last done anything with a child that didn't involve leaving them face down in a pool of their own blood or simply vaporizing them. He'd let a few of them run in fear from him or hide if he spared their parents, but none of that came anywhere close to playing with them as he was obviously expected to do now. Kanata wasn't completely sure he even remembered how to go about playing with little kids.

Kumo stopped and looked back at his 'playmate.' "Can't get me!" he repeated suggestively, taking a few more steps while keeping his eyes on Kanata.

The saiyan from the future continued watching the boy, but gave no sign of giving chase.

"CAN'T GET ME!" Kumo yelled as loudly as he could, putting on a bit more speed, but still keeping his eyes behind him on Kanata.

Crash!

"Ow," the little boy mumbled as he rubbed his head and looked up in surprise at the large tree he'd just run into. He glanced around quickly, to see if anyone had seen his mishap, but fortunately the older people were all paying attention to other things.

The ball that he'd stolen from Kanata was only a few feet away, but as soon as Kumo moved to retrieve it, the ball vanished into thin air.

Kumo stared at the spot the ball had just disappeared from, but couldn't even begin to think of what had just happened.

"Can't get me," a voice chuckled in his ear and he turned just in time to see Kanata floating upside down and drifting away, the ball held low to the ground so the two year old would be able to get it if he could catch his new friend. The little boy shrieked with joy and took off after the saiyan from the future at a surprisingly fast pace, chasing his new friend around the yard.

"Well, they seem to be getting along well," Pan said with a smile as she glanced over at the two playmates.

Akira followed her gaze and grunted. "He won't stay, you know."

"I know," Pan replied with a slightly sad smile, "I just figured it would be good for him to remember what things were like before..."

Akira nodded, still watching Kanata and Kumo playing and then whispered, "I'm going with him."

Short of slapping her across the face, Akira could not possibly have done or said anything that would surprise her like those words did. "You're what?"

"I'm going with him to his future to help him. I owe him that much. If he hadn't done all those terrible things in his timeline, if he hadn't come back, I would have lost you...I would have become him."

"But..."

"But I'm not really doing it for him, or even for me," Akira added quickly, "I'm doing it because you love him. I'll do everything I can to make sure he lives…because of you."

"Akira..." Pan whispered, "Akira, no. If you go...if you die..."

The instant the last word passed her lips; Akira's strong hands had latched onto her shoulders and held her at arms length while he looked her square in the eye. "I am not going to die," he told her fiercely, "I'm going to make sure he stays alive, and then I'm coming back here for you."

"But..."

"No! No 'buts,' I swear to you that I'll be back," his eyes burned with intensity as he stared at her and then softened a second later. "Besides, with two Akiras, what's the worse that could happen?"

"You could get killed," Pan whispered back, clearly not in a joking mood.

A long silence stretched out between the two. Somehow, when Akira pictured this conversation - in the few seconds he'd had to think about it - Pan had been a lot more understanding. He didn't want to hurt her, by leaving with the possibility that he might not survive the encounter, but he also didn't want to see her grieving over the loss of Kanata...because if Kanata left alone, there wasn't a doubt in Akira's mind that he would not live through the fight with the Arlean.

"Then I want to go too," Pan whispered at last.

"No."

Pan glared up at him, "So you think you can put your life in danger, but I can't do the same? If you're coming, then I'm coming."

"Pan, please...if there are more clones like we fought, you..."

"I'll what?" she demanded, her hands on her hips and a scowl firmly entrenched on her lips. "You don't think I could keep up?

"No, you couldn't," Akira replied honestly, though he cringed as he prepared himself for the tongue-lashing he was sure he was about to receive.

Pan's face turned an unpleasant shade of red and then in an instant seemed to return to its natural color. "Then I'll get Bulma to let me use the Brute Ray."

Akira rubbed his temples, this conversation was spiraling out of control now. Why the hell had he even bothered to tell her? He knew her well enough to know that she would argue with him like this. Things would have been much simpler if he'd just...no, he had to be honest with her, keeping secrets was what messed everything up in the first place.

"Look," he said in a quiet, pleading voice, "I can't let you come...I can't lose you..."

"And I can't lose you," Pan replied, running her finger tips gently along his jaw line, "If you're going to do this, I want to be there with you. You're going back because I love Kanata and you want to keep him safe for me, but I love you too, and I don't think I can trust Kanata to keep you safe..." the last part was said with a grin as she tried to lighten the mood.

It didn't exactly lighten the mood, but it did give Akira an idea. "If you're this set on it…I doubt I could stop you even if I tried, but you'll have to talk to Kanata about it," he said, fully expecting his future self to dismiss the idea of Pan putting herself in danger without a second thought.

It wasn't that Akira wanted to shrug of the responsibility of talking some sense into Pan; she could just be stubborn as hell when she wanted to be and he had a bad habit of letting her get her way instead of fighting with her. Actually, most of the men he knew where like that. They might all be some of the strongest fighters the universe had ever seen, but they all married women (and in Vegeta and Gohan's case: sired daughters) who could boss them around like it was no one's business. Goten was the closest to having a laid back wife, but from the stories Pan and Trunks had told, Valese could be very…persuasive as well, when she wanted to be.

By letting Kanata take care of it, Akira was just letting the person most in charge handle the decisions on who could accompany him to his timeline.

Sadly, the idea of talking Kanata into letting her come didn't seem to cause even the slightest hesitation in Pan. She simply smiled and said, "I will," and then changed the subject, leaving Akira very confused and more than a little nervous.

ooo

A little over an hour later, the Z Fighters and their families were sitting down to eat at the large picnic tables Bulma had had set up in the back yard. A lot of the usual conversations that took place whenever they got together were going on again, though a few of them were discussing more recent events.

Puar was teasing Oolong, who was complaining about the inclusion of pork products in several dishes. Yamcha and Vegeta were arguing. Chi-Chi and Bulma were discussing how long it would be before Trunks and Icalla started having kids while Bra listened in and giggled. Trunks and Icalla were turning funny shades of red and wishing they could go somewhere else. A blond Launch was discussing weaponry with Videl, while Valese was desperately searching for some pepper so she and Videl could go back to discussing less violent things with purple haired Launch. Krillin, Tien, Chiaotzu, and Gohan were telling stories about their adventuring days. Goten had pulled Uubu aside and was giving him the stern older "brother" talk now that the Mystic One was apparently dating Bra, really it was more of a dress rehearsal for the discussion that would come from Trunks sooner or later, which in turn was just a warm up for the horror that would be Vegeta's version of the talk should the Saiyan Prince ever get the young warrior away from the women who were protecting him. And Akira and Pan were off elsewhere simply enjoying their time together now that their relationship had been healed.

After a while the conversations began to die down and Vegeta began yelling for food, so Bulma had everyone sit down while the meal was set out for them. Before they could dig in, however, Bulma noticed that they were – as was often the case with this group – missing two people.

"Alright," Bulma sighed, "Where are Kumo and Akira?"

Akira raised his hand from the far end of the table, "Uh, Bulma, I'm right here."

"Oh," Bulma had been sure Akira would be off with Kumo, he was always off with Kumo when the little boy came over. "In that case, where's…" she glanced around the table quickly and realized who was gone, "where's Kanata?"

Before anyone could answer, there was a loud cry of surprise from the side of the house and suddenly a small object was rocketed into the air.

"Kumo!" Goten yelled as his keen eyes instantly recognized the small form as it shot towards the clouds.

He was in the air in a heartbeat, Akira and Gohan close behind. It took only a few seconds for the three of them to reach the airborne toddler, but by the time they got there, Kumo already had company.

Kanata was simply floating along next to the boy as he reached the apex of his assent and then began falling towards the ground.

"Okay kid," the saiyan from the future said in a calm voice, "now start pushing your energy under you."

Kumo's face scrunched up in concentration, but he continued to fall at a rapidly increasing rate.

"You better hurry up," Kanata said casually, "it won't be fun to hit the ground at these speeds."

"Kumo!" Goten yelled again as he reached for his son. Before his hand could latch onto his falling child, Kanata smacked it away.

"How do you expect him to learn to fly if you help him?" Kanata demanded.

"He's just a kid! He doesn't need to learn how to fly!" The conversation did not sound like it was taking place five hundred feet in the air.

"He's a saiyan! He's more than capable of learning." Four hundred and fifty feet above the ground.

"He doesn't need to learn this yet and even if he did, there are better ways of teaching him than throwing into the air and telling him to figure it out!" Three hundred and fifty feet.

Akira tried to move around Kanata and give Kumo a hand, but before he could he was smacked across the face and sent tumbling end over end away from the rapidly descending group.

"Are you insane?" Gohan yelled, "If Kumo doesn't figure it out, the impact will kill him." He was fairly convinced that Kanata had no intention of catching the boy at the last minute should he fail to save himself.

"He's strong, he'll learn," Kanata replied, completely unconcerned with less than two hundred feet to go.

"He's my son, damn it! Get out of the way!" Goten's hair flashed gold for a moment, but he did not transform.

"He's got the blood of a warrior race flowing through his veins; let him start living up to his heritage!" One hundred feet and still falling.

"I don't care about his heritage, I'm his father and I'll decide when he learns to fly!" Goten transformed and seemed to vanish as he rushed to his falling son with less than twenty feet between him and the ground.

Goten matched his son's falling speed and reached out for the boy's hand. He was just about to grab it when suddenly Kumo wasn't there anymore. The two Son brothers and Kanata both came to screeching halts in mid air, hovering just a few inches above the ground, and looked up.

There was Kumo, grinning from ear to ear as he floated above them. He wasn't what anyone would call steady, but he was clearly hovering by his own power.

"He…he did it," Gohan whispered.

Goten's mouth was hanging open; he couldn't do anything but stare up in awe at his son.

"Look Daddy," Kumo yelled, "I'ma birdy!" He began flapping his arms and trying to fly higher.

Kanata gave the two older men a "see-I-told-you-so" grin and then floated up to his young student.

"Alright, let's fly to your mom and show her your new trick," he said as he began smoothly gliding towards the backyard. Kumo's flight was wobbly and several times he nearly fell out of the sky, but he put a determined look on his face and followed, slowly losing altitude along the way.

When the little boy reached his mother he dropped from two feet up, straight into her waiting arms and giggled. "I'ma birdy, momma!" he proclaimed.

Valese hugged her child fiercely and scowled at Kanata, who didn't appear to notice as he dropped onto his seat next to Yamcha.

A moment later they were joined by the rescue party.

"He…he flew," Goten whispered as he sat down next to his wife and son.

"Yeah," Valese said as she continued glaring at Kanata, "He was also thrown hundreds of feet into the air."

"But…but he can fly," Goten was still trying to get his brain around that one. "He's way younger than Gohan and I were when we learned…"

"Huh, it's not like _that's_ a hard record to break," Vegeta grumbled with a role of his eyes. "Any saiyan born with an elite class power level should be flying at this age."

Any conversation that was going to take place about the marvel that was Kumo's new trick, or the fact that Vegeta didn't find it particularly impressive was lost amongst a sudden rush for food by Kanata, Akira, and Vegeta.

ooo

By the time the meal was eaten, just a little while after Valese got over her anger towards Kanata for his rather insensitive training regimen, and just slightly before Vegeta got bored and picked a fight with whoever (most likely his wife, Yamcha, or Akira), Bulma stood up and decided to say a few words.

"Uh, I know you all know why we're here, but I just thought maybe I should be the first to say goodbye, since I was the first to be saved," she smiled sweetly at Kanata who blushed and looked down in embarrassment. "Kanata, we'll all be sorry to see you go…in fact, I wish I could talk you into staying, but I know that you feel like there's still something you need to do in your timeline…so I guess I just want to say thanks and we'll miss you."

Kanata mumbled something and shuffled his feet under the table.

"I just wish there was something we could do to help you with your quest after you did so much for us," Bulma continued in a quieter, nearly tearful voice.

"There is," Akira said, suddenly on his feet, "I'm going with him."

There was a moment of shocked confusion on the faces of everyone at the table.

"Me too," Pan announced as she also rose.

"The hell you are!" Kanata yelled, glaring at her and then at Akira whom he assumed was somehow involved in the endangerment of Pan.

"I'm not letting you do this alone!" Pan shot back.

"They won't be," said Goten as he stood, "I'll go with them."

"And me," announced Gohan.

Trunks glanced at Icalla – who nodded uneasily – and then stood.

Soon Uubu, Yamcha, and Tien were standing as well.

Vegeta – who was not as prone to such silly antics – merely nodded towards the saiyan from the future, letting him know that nothing would keep him from missing this fight.

Kanata wanted to tell them they were idiots. He wanted to tell them there was no way in hell he was going to let them throw their lives away by coming back with him. He wanted to tell them he wasn't worthy of dying for. But he couldn't. He just couldn't bring himself to say it because somewhere deep down, he was rejoicing to see them willing to come with him. To see his friends – though not the versions that had died thinking he killed them – willing to stand with him against his enemy. To be accepted by them once again.

He stared around the table at each of the Z Fighters standing (and sitting), and nodded his thanks, not trusting himself to talk, before floating away from the table and up onto the Capsule Corp building to the spot he liked to sit and think.

The Z Fighters all knew what they were doing. They knew that there was a strong possibility that they were heading towards their doom, but it didn't matter. Actually, it wasn't even that unusual other than the fact that they would be facing an enemy who had already killed them and had most likely only strengthened his position since their future selves's demises. Still, it was something they all knew they had to do; all that was left was spending what could be their last night with their loved ones and then heading out the next day.

o

o

A/N: In case your wondering, I really didn't feel like doing any more of this building up to the moment that Kanata (and everyone else) head into the other timeline, so this chapter just kept going even though there were several times that I felt like I could have ended it. Still, at last I'm past all this annoying stuff (hence the nearly 8,000 word long chapter). In the next chapter, the Z Fighters will say goodbye and then it's off to the future. Too be honest, half this chapter was written in the dazed stupor I like to call "the first few days after I spent the better part of a Sunday reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" also known as "The days I was reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for the second time." That book was freakin' great and it more or less ended the ship war that's been raging amongst Harry Potter fans since…um, book one, I guess (incidentally, sorry if any of you like something other than what can now be called the canon relationships). No more Draco and Ginny. No more Ron and Luna. No more Harry and anyone other than the girl who was clearly introduced for the express purpose of being his love interest (and making me laugh). No more staying completely off the subject of whatever it is that I usually talk about down here. Er, anyway I hope some of this made some sort of coherent sense. I suspect that much of it didn't though as I discovered in the middle of the week that my brain is still trying to unwrap itself from all of the freaky happenings of that book (Basketball and Harry Potter apparently don't mix, I haven't played that badly in a while and that's saying something). Well, as usual, thank you for reading please write a review and let me know what you thought.

Courtney: I thought about it, but I just couldn't bring myself to call it that. For some reason that just seemed a bit too cheesy. I totally understand how you feel about reading the Harry Potter book; I think it might very well be the best one of the series so far.

Francis Keenan: Having now watched a couple episodes of Shaman King in a row (surprisingly they all featured the X-Laws too), I can now say that I wish I'd paid more attention to it. It's cool, but I'm absurdly lost (I had no idea Lyserg was an X-Law and Chaco or whatever is a complete mystery). Anyway, time will tell what will happen to Kanata's timeline and the Z Fighters that formerly inhabited it.

ashlee: I'm glad you liked it.

Nova Flame: I'm glad to hear that I've been helpful for you in your writing. The human aspect is key to make characters that people enjoy reading about. If you look at all of the truly great characters, they always have flaws and usually don't handle every situation particularly well (Harry Potter is a great example of this), it's not always an easy thing to do because often times we just want to say, "Look, from my slightly omniscient point of view, if the character says 'X' then 'Y' will happen and life will be more or less perfect for him/her. The problem of course being that no real person can actually keep from screwing things up from time to time so your character (though happy) is now too perfect to be believable. It's tough, but necessary, unfortunately. I must confess that the humorous scenes in my stories usually just sort of appear without any sort of planning behind them, which I guess is good since they seem to be well received, but at the same time it's kind of bad because they draw the story out more and more (I honestly thought that I'd have finished before this, but I'm still not even all the way into the past).

Queen Asinoe: Believe me, if I was just going to say, "Kanata went back to his time and everything worked out for the best," this story would have been finished about six chapters ago. You have nothing to worry about, there will be plenty of violence in the end…unless I go with the option of having Kanata and the Arlean sit down and discuss their differences over tea and cake and in the end decide that they were both wronged by fate so they should just hug and let bygones be bygones…I still haven't ruled that out yet.

donkeykong27: I agree that the last two chapters haven't been as good as they could have been. I suppose they suffered from my apathy concerning this story that I am finally coming out of. Still, I'm glad you liked the last chapter and especially glad that you liked the Kanata-Vegeta scenes since they happen to be my favorites as well.

Rejhan: I don't know if it's funny or just sad. I mean, technically I'm a much better writer when I don't try…somehow that doesn't seem like a good thing. Meh, I'm over it. I'm glad you liked the Vegeta-Kanata interaction; I think that was my favorite part of the chapter to write.

Anouk: Time will tell if Kanata is 'alright,' but he's heading in the right direction. Now if he can just live long enough to actually get there…

jadawulf: For some reason Vegeta is really easy for me to write. I don't know why (could be because he's pretty much my favorite character), but his dialog and what not just comes out nearly perfect (I rarely have to edit anything he says). I've sort of written the end of the story, so I know more or less what Kanata's fate is, hopefully by the time I get there, what I've written will still work for me. I think you'll like it though.

Nicole: I don't know, I think I'll enjoy the fact that I don't have to sit down and write anymore…but I'll probably just find something else to write shortly anyway. Still, the break will be nice. I could never just leave a story unfinished, I don't know how people do it. It would just bug me beyond all reason if it wasn't complete (probably because I've read several stories that have been stopped right at the end). I once found a story that was written all the way up until the last chapter and then the author just stopped writing! The last chapter! How can anyone do something so horrible? I'll always finish any story I start, no matter how painful it becomes, and this one isn't even close to being painful yet. Actually, it's just starting to get fun again.

chibi crazy/insane/confused: You're reviews are about twenty-four chapters back, so I don't know if you've gotten here yet, but if you have I want you to know that I appreciate them. Actually, I'd see your review and have to go look at the chapter to see which part you were referring to liking, or being annoyed by, or being driven crazy over. I hope you've liked everything since then as well (hopefully the story isn't so confusing now).


	70. Return to the Future Part III

**Chapter 70: Return to the Future Part III**

o

Kanata's eyes sprang open and he bolted upright in bed, cold sweat trickling down his chest and back. His breathing was fast and hard as he searched his dark room for someone he desperately wanted to see and yet feared every time she appeared in his nightmares.

The dream that had awoken him was already slipping back into the recesses of his mind even as he trembled from the images it had produced for him.

"It was just a dream," he whispered, "She wouldn't say that..."

_Traitor... _

The dream Pan's words still seemed to echo in his ears.

_Murderer... _

He let out a slow ragged breath and tried to calm himself.

_Coward... _

Kanata squeezed his eyes shut and tried to push the thoughts away, but they refused to leave even after the nightmare was over. He opened his eyes and looked around for the clock.

4 AM

He'd gotten five hours of sleep...he couldn't even remember the last time he'd slept for five straight hours. He never slept for more than an hour or two at a time for this exact reason, when a person is haunted by nightmares the way Kanata was, life was just easier if you didn't sleep much. It wasn't the healthiest thing in the world to do, but it beat going insane.

Knowing there was little point in trying to get anymore sleep, Kanata climbed out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweat pants that someone – probably Bulma or a servant – had left beside his bed, and went looking for food.

The others were all asleep as near as he could tell; at least none of the warriors were up. There were a few life force signatures moving about the house, but most of them were probably servants or janitors in the business portion of the dome building.

He headed into the dark kitchen, not bothering to even turn on the lights, and opened up the refrigerator. There were almost never any leftovers when saiyans came to the table, but Kanata had almost been hopeful that something would have survived the carnage of the previous evening.

Nothing had.

In fact, the refrigerator was almost completely emptied out. The saiyan from the future moved on to the freezer and was pleased to find a tub of ice-cream stashed behind a couple bags of frozen vegetables.

Kanata couldn't help but smile, Bulma always hid an extra carton of her favorite chocolate ice-cream at the very back to keep Vegeta and Bra from hogging it all. Back when he was still Akira, he had 'sampled' a bit of it every once in a while, knowing that Bulma would blame the most likely culprits if she ever felt like admitting she'd been holding out on her family.

He snatched up the tub, grabbed a spoon from a nearby drawer, and sat down at the table. He hadn't had ice-cream in years.

"Ahem."

Kanata spun, his hand filling with ki and pointing in the direction of the voice.

In the eerie red light his energy was giving off, Bulma's face appeared out of the darkness.

Kanata let out a sigh of relief and the glowing ball of ki faded away. "You shouldn't do that," he grunted, "You're lucky I didn't blast you."

"You sound like Vegeta," she chuckled as she got a spoon of her own and sat down next to him before digging a bit of the delicious treat out of the tub.

"How did you find this?" Bulma asked after several minutes of sitting in the dark room in silence.

"I've...er Akira, found it just a couple of months after he started living here. We enjoyed it from time to time ever since."

"That was him!" Bulma yelled before realizing that most of the house was still asleep. "That was him," she whispered the second time around. "That little sneak!"

"Sorry," Kanata whispered back, "We thought it was kind of funny that you'd always give Vegeta a bit of a cold shoulder the next day."

Bulma fumed for a moment over the years of stolen ice-cream and dug savagely into the chocolate treat once again.

After a moment of scowling, the aqua haired woman's face softened and she even let out a quiet chuckle, "Now that I know it was y...him, I'll have to make sure there's a large helping of ExLax in the carton next time he spends the night."

"Seeing as how it will be happening to him and not me, I think that's an excellent idea," Kanata smirked.

Bulma smiled back at him and stood, "Would you like some milk?"

"Sure, why not?"

Bulma went to the fridge and pulled out the milk carton. "Do you want it in a big glass or a li..." her voice trailed off as she caught sight or her ice-cream eating partner. The cardboard carton it the floor and exploded.

"Bulma?" Kanata asked as he spun around to look at her. In the light from the refrigerator he could make out her wide eyed look of horror as she stared at him. "What's wrong?"

She didn't answer.

Kanata stood and walked over to her, "Are you okay?"

A trembling hand slowly rose and softly traced along one of the many scars that covered his body. "Who did this to you?" Bulma whispered.

Kanata stepped away, instantly wishing he'd remained in his room. "It's not important," he said quietly.

"Not important?" Bulma instantly snapped out of her daze and put her hands on her hips. "How can you say this isn't important? It looks like someone took a flail to you back and chest!"

"It was an energy whip," the young man replied so quietly she almost didn't hear him. "I made a mistake and got punished for it."

Bulma's eyes were tracing the scar lines down the back of the saiyan from the future. "You let them do this," she said softly, "You let someone do this to you."

"It was necessary."

"What did you do that you were being punished for?"

"I don't want to talk about it." There was a pleading tone in Kanata's voice. "Please...just let it drop, it doesn't matter anymore."

Bulma stepped closer to him and hugged him, "It matters to me, Akira."

Kanata stiffened at the name, "Don't call me that...that name doesn't mean anything to me anymore."

"It's who you are...no matter how hard you try to forget," Bulma replied, not releasing the hug.

They stood there in silence, until Kanata finally asked, "Will the others be able to get back here...from my timeline?"

Bulma stepped away and smiled up at him, tears in her eyes. "Yes, all of you will be able to come home when you're done over there as long as you use the same time machine."

Kanata almost wished she would have said no, at least then he'd have had a reason to leave without them. As it was, he could not insult the honor they had shown by volunteering to help him in a fight that wasn't truly theirs.

The saiyan from the future reached up to brush the tears from her eyes, but before his hand could get there, Bulma caught it and turned it over. She had noticed the markings on his wrist the night before while they were eating, but hadn't had a chance to investigate until this moment. There were numerous long, deep scars crisscrossing across his wrist, signs of dozens of suicide attempts. "Don't go back," she pleaded. "Don't...just stay with us."

"I can't do that," Kanata's eyes were sad, but also angry. "He killed you all. I won't let him get away with it!"

"Killing him won't bring them back," Bulma whispered. "It won't change anything."

"No," Kanata agreed, "it won't, but he's going to die anyway. I have to kill him; it's the only thing keeping me going anymore." He turned and started to walk towards the stairs, towards the safety of his room.

"I meant it, you know," Bulma called out, bringing him to a halt. "If you wanted to stay, you could...and if you want to come back...when you've done what you need to do...I'd love for you to stay with us."

Kanata did not turn or look at her, but his head drooped. "I won't be coming back," he whispered.

"Why?"

Kanata was silent for a moment and then whispered, "I...I gave up everything for a chance to set things right. In this timeline...Akira won't make the mistakes that I did and you won't suffer because of them, but...I will be judged for my actions." He sighed, "I wanted to see the Arlean punished for what he did to you all, but there are those in my universe who will want to see me punished for my crimes just as badly. Once the Arlean is dead, I will not have an excuse to make them wait any longer."

"What are you talking about?"

"I once told an old friend of yours that I would sacrifice the entire galaxy to bring you all back...I didn't get the chance to take things quite that far, but..." his voice trailed off for a moment and then he started walking away again, "In the end, everyone stands before the judge and gives an account of their actions...my actions are putting me on a one way trip to hell."

He left the room before Bulma could even think of something to say in response.

Bulma sat at the table and ate ice-cream, grieving the loss of a son in silence until the others started coming down for breakfast.

ooo

Akira's morning began very much the way it had the day before, with him waking up to find Pan sleeping peacefully in his arms. This time, however, he had no idea what she was doing there.

Not that he minded, of course. He was just pretty certain that he'd wished her goodnight and left her in one of the guest bedrooms. He'd _wanted_ her to spend the night with him, but the fact that her mom, Bulma, Chi-Chi, and a host of other people that would never let them hear the end of it were all staying under the same roof as them made him willing to forgo what was quickly becoming a nightly ritual for them. That and he didn't want to have to face Gohan should he find out, the beating the two of them had given each other at the Tenkaichi Budoukia would be nothing compared to the horror Gohan would unleash if he thought Akira was taking advantage of his only child…at least that's how Akira's brain chose to picture the confrontation.

Pan groaned slightly and shifted in her sleep, trying to get a little closer to him.

"Time to wake up, beautiful," he whispered softly.

"Muh?" she grunted, refusing to open her eyes.

"You're grandmother just knocked on the door…"

In less than five seconds, Pan had jumped to her feet, looked around in confusion as Akira began to chuckle, realized that she'd been duped, and then lifted Akira's bed off the ground, unceremoniously spilling him onto the floor.

"I think I liked it better when you called me a jerk and hit me in the arm," he complained as he tried to untangle himself for the sheets and get to his feet.

"Well, you are a jerk!" Pan said as she delivered a smack to his shoulder. "I was having a good dream."

"Reeeally?" Akira's curiosity was piqued. "And what…or rather, Who was this really good dream about?"

"Trunks," she replied nonchalantly.

Akira lost his battle with the sheets and fell over with a loud thud as Pan smirked and headed for the door.

The young man stared after her for a moment and then grumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like "you'll get yours" before he finally managed to escape from the clutches of this bedding and followed her out the door.

"Were you really dreaming about Trunks?" he called after her in a voice that the misinformed might possibly have thought was filled with just the teensy tiniest bit of concern. He – naturally – wasn't concerned in the slightest. Nope, not one bit.

"Seriously, you weren't, were you?"

Pan's laughter was the only answer he got.

ooo

Downstairs most of the Z Fighters and their families were milling around the kitchen, snacking on the food Bulma, Launch, and Chi-Chi had made for them…or in the case of Vegeta: hungrily devouring anything that wasn't nailed down or in someone else's mouth (that last part was negotiable).

"Vegeta, that's disgusting!" Bulma complained as her husband filled a large bowl with an entire box of cereal, poured in a carton of milk and then made the contents of the bowl disappear in roughly the time it takes someone to tie their shoe.

"You've seen it every morning for over twenty years, woman. Deal with it," Vegeta grunted in annoyance as he poured himself a second helping, finishing off the box he had opened only moments earlier.

The others suddenly became very focused on their own conversations as yet another fight between the tempestuous couple seemed imminent.

"So, Trunks," Gohan said somewhat loudly as he tried to make himself heard over the beginning of Bulma's mini-tirade, "how did Icalla handle the idea of you going back?"

"She…er…handled it pretty…passionately," Trunks blushed so badly his hair seemed change shades.

"Passionately?" Goten asked and then started laughing.

"Nothing like that…mostly…" Trunks yelled, somehow managing to become a strange shade of purple. "She just wanted me to remember that there was something I really, really, _really_ needed to come back for."

"Hey, I don't even want to know," Gohan replied glancing over at Icalla who was talking quietly with Valese and Videl. The three women had very familiar expressions on their faces, expressions that Gohan had seen his own mother wear every time he and his dad were called upon to save the planet. They were trying to be brave and supportive, but deep down they were also preparing themselves for the news that their husbands (or fiancé) were not coming home this time.

Gohan had hoped that after Ammit things would settle down, that they could live out the rest of their lives in peace. The guy had been some sort of uber-bad guy from ancient times; certainly he was the last of the threats to the planet. But that was not to be the case. They hadn't even gotten four whole years before they were attacked again. Assuming they survived this, how long would it be before the next attack came? Or the one after that?

Gohan's saiyan heritage made him crave combat at times, but that didn't mean he wanted to see his friends and family placed in harms way every other year for the rest of their lives. It just wasn't fair to any of them. Still, they had been given great power and with great power came great responsibility…or at least that's what one of Goten's comics claimed.

Goku had never shirked his responsibility and his children wouldn't either, but there had to be an end somewhere. At some point the universe had to run out of villains to throw at them, didn't it?

Unfortunately, Gohan was all too aware of the fact that the universe was a very big place, with lots of people, both good and bad, in it. Chances were he'd never see the end to the fighting…

The demi saiyan shook off those thoughts and returned to his conversation with Goten and Trunks which had descended into something of a good natured insult trading contest between the two younger men.

At least with Trunks and Goten around there would always be some entertaining dialog to go with the titanic clashes between good and evil that seemed to hound the Z Fighters everywhere they went.

ooo

Very little in the way of exciting or important conversation was held during the next few hours. Akira and Pan appeared, ate some food, and chatted amiably with their parents and friends. Kumo woke and entertained all with his silly antics and impressively quick improvement in the art of flying. Bra eventually dragged herself downstairs with her hair far messier than anyone (save her family members) had ever seen it before – she was obviously not a morning person. Uubu had been downstairs for quite sometime when Bra arrived, but her presence made him suddenly a bit more of the center of attention, or at least the center of Bra and Vegeta's attention (he would have preferred it if the later had continued to ignore him, but the former's presence made it all worth it).

Eventually, the different families all sought some privacy to spend what could be their last moments as whole families together. Important, heartfelt words were shared between lovers, children were praised for becoming the wonderful people they were, and plenty of hugs and tears were shared. In the case of the Vegeta clan, mostly it was Bulma crying and hugging and saying things she wanted her kids and husband to know before they left on their dangerous mission, while Vegeta rolled his eyes and grunted a lot so that no one would think he was going soft.

And then, almost as if he'd been waiting for them to all get their goodbyes out of the way, Kanata walked down the stairs and informed them that he was leaving and anyone who planned on joining him should come now. Without another word, he walked out the door.

Vegeta glanced around to make sure no one was paying any attention to him and then kissed Bulma quickly, but it was enough to bring a small glow to the aging scientist's face, before he stepped outside and floated into the sky.

Trunks said his goodbyes to Icalla and promised he'd be back. He was about to leave when his mother handed him a capsule and told him he and three others would be able to use it if they needed it. He wasn't sure what was in the capsule, but he thanked her and, after a quick peck on her cheek and a smile towards Bra (who was otherwise engaged), he was out the door and in the air.

Krillin and Eighteen were both leaving. They said goodbye to their daughter and promised they'd return soon. There were tears in all three's eyes as the android and her husband left Marron and leapt into the air outside.

Pan said goodbye to her mother at the same time Akira was doing the same with Bulma, and then the two also took to the air and followed the convoy of flying Z Fighters.

Tien and Launch said their goodbyes, as did Yamcha and Puar. Chiaotzu was left saying farewell to all of his friends as the lone Z Fighter who was simply not strong enough to participate in the battles in any way.

Goten kissed Valese one last time and told his hovering son he was proud of him before hurrying to his mother, giving her a peck on the cheek and heading out the door.

Gohan and Videl hugged and whispered private little things in each other's ears before separating and saying goodbye. As the eldest of the demi-saiyans stepped out the door, Videl informed him that he was to return home as soon as the whole mess was resolved and with himself and their daughter in one piece…or there'd be hell to pay. It brought a smile to the warrior scholar's face to see that the fierce (and slightly scary) woman he'd fallen in love with when he was in high school still remained despite the years. He swore that he'd return, gave his mother a kiss on the cheek and disappeared out the door.

The last to leave was Uubu. He'd actually tried to leave more than once, but every time he did, Bra pulled him back and kissed him again. Of all of them, they were the two who were showing the most strain over the sudden – and possibly permanent – separation. They were the two who had just found each other and as such were still in the stage of their relationship where every word and every action was fraught with powerful emotions that simply seemed to run wild. The other friends and lovers being left behind felt the separation just as strongly, but they had had lots of time with their loved ones, they were almost used to this after all these years. Bra and Uubu had no prior experience to compare this to. They were being pulled apart for the first time and it was not lost on either that this might very well be the most dangerous of the missions the Z Fighters had taken up because if Uubu were to die in the other timeline, he could not come back.

And so Bra kissed him, again and again and again, until the rest of the Z Fighters were tiny specks in the sky and only then did she let him hurry out the door, his lips bruised and his face beet red either from embarrassment or from prolonged periods of oxygen deprivation.

ooo

It took a surprisingly short amount of time to get to where Kanata had hidden the time machine, not that getting anywhere on Earth really took all that long for the Z Fighters, but given the enormity of what they were about to do, it seemed like it should have taken longer for some reason.

Goten let out a quiet whistle of appreciation as the Z Fighters began to enter the large craft, "Got to hand it to Bulma, she's still pretty damn good at what she does."

Trunks's eyes were as wide as saucers as he looked up at the ship. "I never knew mom was having this built," he whispered, "She's grooming me to start running the company in a few years, why didn't she say anything?"

"Probably didn't want you screwing things up," Pan replied with a smile as she walked past him.

"At least you know there'll be surprises waiting for you on your first day as the head honcho," Akira added as he followed the dark haired girl in.

Trunks didn't have anything to say to that, the idea was almost overwhelming, and then he looked around and realized that he was the only one still standing outside and hurried into the ship.

Kanata didn't talk to anyone, he didn't give them the grand tour, he didn't even look at them. He just went to the bridge of the ship, informed Giru that they were leaving and then locked himself in his room.

Giru – whom Pan (and, to a lesser degree, Trunks) was excited to see – informed the Z Fighters that they would be traveling a short distance into space and then opening the space-time rift and returning to the timeline the ship was from. Before anyone had a chance to ask questions, the little round robot was already trotting back to the bridge of the ship to get it up and running, leaving the Z Fighters with nothing to do but explore the time machine.

In short order, Vegeta had found the gravity room and was "playing," Pan, Gohan, Trunks, and Uubu had found the kitchen and were having a light snack, Yamcha, Krillin, and Tien had found some sort of entertainment area and were exploring Mirai-Bulma's DVD collection while Eighteen rolled her eyes, but continued to listen to the list of movies the men were shouting out.

Akira had simply found a quiet, empty room and locked himself in. It was a bit anti-social perhaps, but he couldn't bring himself to be as seemingly light hearted as his friends were right now. Whether it was because he'd seen far less actual combat than them and didn't know how to handle it as calmly as they did or because he was going to see what his future would have looked like had Pan been killed, was hard to say, but he knew that at that moment he just wanted to be alone.

The ship gave a small shudder and then blasted off into space without any other warning.

However Akira felt about the situation he and his friends were in, there was no turning back now. In a few minutes – or maybe hours…Akira hadn't actually heard how long this little trip was going to take – they'd be in a possible future fighting against an enemy who could have a whole hoard of clones or perhaps only have the few that he had already been making in this timeline. Regardless, this most likely would not be an easy fight and it was very possible that his friends could die and never be revived.

The young saiyan closed his eyes and breathed these disconcerting thoughts out of his system. He would just have to make sure that didn't happen.

Another shudder ran through the ship, only this time it was accompanied by a strange sensation, as the ship opened a rift in space and time and began its journey to the future.

Their course was set.

Their destiny would be greeting them shortly.

All they could do was wait to see what it would bring.

But first...

"Hey there," a voice called out to Akira, "Long time no see."

The young man's eyes snapped open and then went wide in shock at the sight before him.

o

o

A/N: Ugh, sorry this took so long to come out. I'll try and have another done by the end of the weekend (heavy stress on the word _try_). This chapter wasn't pleasant to write, which is why it's so late. Too little happened for my taste. Oh well, either by the start or the end of the next chapter they'll be in the future and that's all that maters. Review and let me know what you thought.

ashlee: I'm glad you liked it so much, hopefully this chapter was as 'amazing' as the last one. I too started skimming through the new Harry Potter, mostly because I was supposed to be cleaning and didn't much want to. Then I started reading the first chapter...then I did the dishes and immediately went back and read the second chapter...then I got out the vacuum but thought maybe I'd read the next chapter first...the vacuum is still sitting in the hallway!

Rejhan: I think there needed to be some sort of 2 day holiday around the Harry Potter release so that all of us who couldn't put the book down would have enough time to recover before we were forced to be functional members of society again.

Toni the Mink: Haha, no, I wouldn't do something like that to you. This story might be a bit OC centric perhaps, but it's not THAT bad. Besides, Akira and Kanata would get their asses handed to them and then I'd be forced to end the story on a very sad note. As far as the number of chapters left, if this thing goes 30 more chapters I'll probably have to shot myself! It's way too long as it is in my opinion. I actually thought that I'd be done in 5-10 chapters about 15-20 chapters ago, but things just kept getting more complicated. This is the last story I write that doesn't have a firm outline set for it ahead of time.

Queen Asinoe: I don't know if 'heaps' more chapters are coming, but certainly there will be a few more (I'm personally getting tired of writing). A Draco and Snape fan, eh? Just curious, do you like Draco because of something in the book or because of the movies? Being a guy - and consequently not finding the actor who plays Draco to be good looking in the slightest (none of us guys are really) - I've found Draco quite detestable throughout the series, but for some reason a lot of people (I suspect mostly girls) like him. Anyway, I suspect that the blonde ferret's fate does not lie with the Deatheaters; he just came off too torn there at the end. Snape is another matter...but then I've always despised him as well, so his painful demise will be enjoyable for me.

kaizer: Well, I'm glad you were surprised, I kind of thought it was a bit predictable, but then I've already written part of the end, so I guess I knew what was coming.

Courtney: Like Spiderman, huh? I'd never thought of it that way, but you're right, it was very similar to the end of the first Spiderman movie. Hopefully Book 7 will have as happy of an ending for my favorite couple as Spiderman 2 did for Peter and Mary Jane. I'm glad you liked Kumo's flying lesson, it was sort of random, but I just liked the idea of Kanata chucking the poor kid into the air and telling him he'd better figure out how to fly quickly.

donkeykong27: Well, you don't have to be original when saying anything about my work, I just appreciate you saying _something_.

D-Fire Master: I think Kanata was kind of stuck with them once they said they'd go back, he might be a bit of a bastard, but he isn't going to turn down his best chance of winning the coming battle. It pains me to say it, but I think you might be right about Snape. I don't know if Snape would have been told to kill anyone should it come down to it (the wording of the dialog just before the deed was done leads me to believe that Snape's actions were a surprise), but I also think that all is not as it appeared to be...I guess we'll find out in about two years. -sigh-

BballAnimeLover89: Sorry, Trunks is going to be hit in the head five seconds into the fight and left that way for the rest of the fight...maybe he'll be left in the bleak future as well...eh, just kidding. He'll have his moments to shine I'm sure. Actually, he should have some pretty good parts I think.

Francis Keenan: I suppose you're right, but the fact that the Arlean already had five more clones growing when he was caught in Akira's timeline could lead one to believe that an army (or at least a nice even baker's dozen) was being grown. I suppose Akira was making a bit of a leap in logic, but not a terribly huge one. By the way, I fear that your comments on Shaman King have had a tragic effect on my life...or at least on my checking account as I have become so curious about it, I will now have to go out and either buy the mangas or the dvds and check it out. It wouldn't be so bad except I've been buying and reading all of Ranma 1/2, plus the new uncut episodes of dbz, and have been reading Naruto online (at least that one's free). I'm going to have Japanese Anime leaking out of my ear by the time I'm through with all of these...

chibi crazy: Yeah, that was a freaky love triangle...but as you can see it all worked out in the end. I'm glad you liked that the chapters were long, I sometimes think I leave them too short (only about 4,000 words a piece). Hopefully you're happy with this chapter as well.

Midnight46: Surprisingly, you were the only one that mentioned the bold thing. I don't know what happened there, but it didn't have that when I uploaded it. I recognize all the bold text though, those are things that I edited or added while I was at work or in the library over the week. Usually I just email a copy of the chapter to myself and then look through it whenever I find the time and if I pick up a mistake or think something should be added, I put it in bold so I can see where the changes need to be made. I was pretty sure I unbolded (if that's even a word) it before I uploaded it, and it isn't like that in the copy saved on my computer, but I guess somehow it carried onto the site...weird. Anyway, thanks for catching it for me. I went back and fixed it. As for why Kanata flew instead of using Instant Transmission, I'm not completely sure I know what you mean...the only two times he travels he either uses I.T. (to get back to Capsule Corp.) or is going to the Yunzabit Heights (and since there isn't a life force to teleport to, he has to fly to get there).

Nova Flame: Well, I'm glad the 'funny' scenes are keeping you entertained while we wait for the fight. As I've said before, I don't know if I _can_ end this story happily, it's just not a happy story (though I'll be happy when it ends), but I don't think it will be a 'sad' ending either. Yeah, 800 reviews is a crazy number...I try not to think about it actually, it's just weird to think that this story could get that many.

TrailerFlip: I'm glad I could be of some help to you and thanks for the review. After reading your review I started wondering if there would be anyway to work Kumo into the fight, but the more I think of it, the less likely it seems. I mean, I think I could have gotten him onto the ship and into the future, but I think this fight is just going to be way too much for him. He is, after all, not even three yet…it could be a really funny idea (if I could write it right), but I think it would cause me a lot more problems than it'd be worth. There might be a place for him to fight, but it won't be in the final battle, that will be a bit more serious of a fight. Thanks for the idea though.

Nicole: You're review was number 777, the number of perfection! Yay! Anyway, I had a lot of people say they didn't think that Kanata would bring help back with him, but I thought it was kind of obvious too. I'm glad you liked Kumo's flying lesson, that kid's fun to write about. Perhaps I'll just devote an entire chapter to him at some point…maybe right in the middle of the big battle that's about to break out, there will suddenly be this random "Here's what Kumo's doing while everyone is fighting" chapter. That would be kind of funny. Hmmmmm, eh, probably not. I actually had no clue who the Half-Blood Prince could be thankfully. I purposefully stayed as far away as possible from anything that could be considered a spoiler and was glad to be surprised by so much of the happenings in the book (with the exception of the romances, I've seen those coming since about book 2).


	71. The Trip Back

**Chapter 71: The Trip Back**

o

"Bulma?" Icalla called out, gently knocking on her future mother-in-law's bedroom door as she opened it. "Are you in here?"

The aqua haired woman was standing at the window, watching Valese chase a flying Kumo around the yard down below. A small tear tried to make its way down her cheek, but she quickly brushed it away before it made it more than half way.

"Bulma?" Icalla tried again.

Bulma glanced over her shoulder, gave Icalla a small smile and then resumed her vigil.

"Uh, Chiaotzu says he felt Tien vanish, so I guess they've gone back now..."

The older woman gave a small grunt to show that she'd heard, but nothing else.

"Do you...do you really think they'll be able to come back after they're done?" Icalla asked, biting her lip with worry.

"The ones that survive can," Bulma replied quietly.

Icalla's breath caught in her throat. It was an unspoken rule among those that were forced to stay home and wait for the Z Fighters return that they would never say that there would be casualties. They all knew that it was likely, maybe even probable, but they always acted as though invading space aliens, maniacal robots, and mystical beings were merely an unconvinced and that their day would continue as usual once the inconvenience was dealt with. Giving voice to the possible results of their loved ones going off to fight these enemies made things too real; it was easier to pretend that these battles were no big deal… that they would always win and come home without a scratch.

Bulma apparently didn't feel like playing make-believe today.

"You...you think...they'll die?" Icalla whispered.

"Kanata will," Bulma replied, bowing her head and blinking away the tears.

The two women stood in silence for a long time, one trying to think of how to respond, the other wishing she could be left to grieve alone.

"Kumo sure is picking his new skill up quickly, isn't he?" Bulma asked at long last, deciding that it would be better to change the subject than to let Icalla suffer the awkward silence any longer. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised given who his grandfather is."

"Yeah," Icalla agreed with a smile as she stepped up to the window and watched as the little boy shot into the air and then dropped like a stone before bring his decent to a stop just a little bit above the hands of his slightly frantic mother. "He's a bit like his father too."

Bulma let a small grin grace her lips and nodded.

"Is...is that how Trunks learned to fly?" Icalla asked after a moment of hesitation.

"You know, I never asked," Bulma chuckled in spite of the depression she felt. "Videl didn't learn that way and neither did Goten – Gohan taught them. I think Trunks taught Bra and she wouldn't have put up with him throwing her into the air like that, but Vegeta never said how Trunks learned. He just said he was going to take him to the park and when they got back, Trunks could fly and Vegeta spent the rest of the day in the gravity room turning robots into scrap metal..."

"So…" Icalla's voice trailed off as she tried to think of the best way to phrase her question, "…what's it like?"

"Flying, I don't know, I've never bother—"

"No, I mean, what's it like being married to...to a saiyan."

Bulma let out a small sigh and thought for a long time before answering. "Vegeta and Goku were...are different than their kids and Akira are. They lived for the battles, but... no, it isn't hard. They might not have always acted like it, but their worlds revolved around their families. Everything they did, no matter how selfish or stupid it seemed, was so they would be strong enough to protect us."

Kumo was now doing flips in the air and Valese looked ready to faint. Videl and Bra had joined her outside, but had apparently decided not to use their aerial skills to lend a helping hand just yet.

"When I met Vegeta," Bulma continued, "he was easily the most sadistic, vile, egotistical, gorgeous man I had ever met, but he was also brave and strong and willing to lay down his life to prove his worth to himself. When I found out I was pregnant with Trunks...well, to say he wasn't happy would be an understatement. He left us and went to train by himself so he wouldn't be chained down by some 'weak human and her bastard son.' But after Goku died fighting Cell, sacrificing himself for us, Vegeta changed."

The older woman looked at her son's fiancé and said, "It wasn't anything big, no grand 'I love you's' or anything, but he was different. We still fought a lot, he still trained more than was healthy, and he acted like he couldn't care less about Trunks, but he wasn't the same man he'd been before.

"I don't know that I even really understood what was happening until one night I woke up to feed Trunks and found Vegeta standing over his crib, singing something in the saiyan language..." her eyes seemed to lose their focus as her mind took her back to the memory, "...he sang it so softly I couldn't believe it was even coming out of his mouth...though I imagine it was all about fighting and killing enemies, and then he whispered that he would always protect Trunks and me, even if it killed him, because we were his family." Bulma took a deep breath and closed her eyes, letting the emotions of that night wash over her. "I think that was when I really knew that he felt the same way about me as I had about him for so long.

"Trunks is very much like his father in many ways," Bulma went on, rousing herself from the found memory. "He might not be as big of a stickler for training and certainly doesn't like to argue the way Vegeta does, but he loves his family...loves you, enough to go to any lengths to protect you." A wider smile formed on Bulma's face as a thought struck her, "It isn't hard being married to a saiyan and it certainly isn't hard to love one, the hard part is keeping them fed!"

Icalla smiled back, "Amen to that."

Outside, Kumo had finally been captured - thanks to the help of Bra and Videl who had taken pity on poor Valese. Bulma's smile faded just a little as she watched the little man being brought inside - kicking and screaming - for his nap. She hoped her children would have the chance to watch their kids learn things like this...but at least one of them had already said he never would.

ooo

"So Uubu, how did this whole thing between you and Bra happen?" Goten asked as he bit into a piece of unidentifiable food and was pleased to find that it was edible.

The Mystical One choked on whatever he was eating and then looked up at the son of his mentor in surprise...his eyes widening when he realized that Goten, Gohan, and Pan were all standing between him and the exit. There was no escape.

"Well - cough - we...we were friends for a while...and uh, things...changed." It was a pretty lame reply, even by his standards.

"Come on Uubu," Pan coaxed, "Just give us the 'when,' 'where,' and 'why' and we'll think about leaving you alone."

"Don't forget the 'how,'" Goten added with a smirk.

Uubu looked at Gohan pleadingly. The eldest demi-saiyan hadn't even been looking at the other three occupants in the room, a possible sign that he at least was going to be mature enough to allow Uubu's relationship with Bra to remain private.

Gohan seemed to sense the young human's look and turned to him with an assuring smile. "Guys, leave Uubu alone...we should at least wait until Vegeta gets here before we start interrogating him.

Uubu had never told a story so fast in his entire life.

ooo

"You're..." Akira's voice trailed off, not even able to finish the sentence.

"Goku," the legendary saiyan finished for the communicatively challenged young man. "It's nice to see you again, Akira."

"Again?" Akira was actually proud of himself for managing to get even the single word out of his uncooperative mouth.

"Well, you didn't think I sent you off without getting a look at you first, did you?" Goku asked with a grin.

Akira opened and closed his mouth and then swallowed several times as some fifty questions tried to escape past his lips at the same time.

Goku smiled and sat down next to the young man, a strangely wise and yet innocent expression on his youthful face. If Akira had to guess, he'd have said that Goku couldn't have been much older than him, despite the fact that he should have been at least sixty-five. Even Vegeta, with his seemingly eternally youthful features, was affected by the passage of time, but Goku was basically just a kid even after all these years.

"A dragon turning you into a kid again will do that," the 'older' saiyan said, reading his young companion's thoughts.

There was a moment or two of silence while Akira tried to wrap his brain around what was happening and who he was actually talking to.

"I...I need...I should go… get the others, they'll all want to see you," Akira finally managed to get out, the excitement of what his friends would say when they were reunited with their long lost loved on brought a surge of adrenaline. He rose to head for the door, but before he'd even taken a step, Goku had grabbed hold of his arm.

"You can't get them," he said sadly, "our connection is the only reason that you can see me. The others won't be able to."

Akira took several deep breaths as the adrenaline seeped out of his his body once again. "But... we could at least try, right? I mean, I could tell them what you're saying and doing if they can't see or hear you."

"As much as I'd like that, it's not why I'm here and we don't have a whole lot of time any way. They know how I feel about them and they know that I won't be able to see them until after they've died." The look on Goku's face told Akira that the older saiyan would like nothing more than to go chat with his children and grandchild, but for whatever reason he had decided that he wouldn't.

"So why are you here then?"

"Too be honest, it's pretty hard appearing to you except when you're in between times like this, so I thought this would be the best time for me to come see you and tell you why you exist," Goku smiled at the look of shock on the younger man's face. "Since, I don't know if you going to survive this fight, I thought it would be for the best if I talked to you on this leg of the trip instead of waiting for you to come back."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Akira grumbled with a frown.

"It's nothing personal," Goku replied calmly, "but let's face it, you and I don't exactly have the best track record for surviving battles."

Akira wanted to say that Goku had died many more times than he had, but he was also aware of the fact that the legendary saiyan had been in many more fights than he had as well. Akira's fights had all ended up with him either dead (against Xellos), practically dead (against Ammit), or should have been dead (against Kanata). The only fight against an opponent of near equal strength that he'd really managed to come out of without too much damage had been against his clone on Namek and that one was more of a draw than anything else...not exactly the kind of stellar record that inspired a lot of confidence in his chances of survival.

"I'm listening," he said at last sitting down on the floor.

"Well, I guess it starts just a little after I left on Shenron's back…"

ooo

_Uubu and Bra were the only guests left at the Lookout. Krillin, Eighteen, Marron, and Mr. Roshi had left only a few minutes earlier and now the young couple were more or less alone. Mr. Popo had cleared the remains of the meals the Z Fighters and their families had eaten and was off tending to the plants in the gardens. Dende had wandered to the edge of the Lookout and was leaning against his walking stick and swaying slightly as he drifted along in the ebb and flow of the underlying energy of the planet far below._

_"So...I, uh, guess I should be heading home too," Uubu said as he shuffled his feet nervously, "I don't want my parents to be worried about me."_

_"Sure..." Bra nodded, biting her lower lip as she debated what to say next, "I, um, should probably get back home before my mom starts getting any strange ideas."_

_"Strange ideas?"_

_"Yeah, you know...about, um, us?"_

_"Right..."_

_Neither said anything for a few moments, a byproduct of the rather uncharted waters their relationship had ventured into during the last few days._

_Uubu spent those moments trying desperately to think of something remotely interesting to say to her, but his mind seemed to have gone blank, leaving him feeling ridiculously nervous and more than a little stupid._

_'I should have known it was a bad idea to think that she'd be interested in me,' he thought dejectedly. 'She's used to all of the smart, rich, charming guys...I can't even string three sentences together without getting tongue tied!'_

_What he didn't know was that at that exact moment, Bra was cursing her lack of coherency and wondering how long it would take Uubu to get sick of hanging around a girl whose vocabulary seemed to be defined by the words, 'yeah,' 'uh,' and 'um.' Surely there were girls in his village who knew how to speak clearly on a consistent basis and didn't have extremely powerful fathers causing trouble for him..._

_"Well...um, bye, Uubu." Bra whispered, she leaned up and gave him a soft peck on the cheek, and then started walking towards the edge of the Lookout, cursing herself for using the word 'um' again._

_Just as she reached the edge, Uubu came to a bold decision and sprinted after her. "Bra, wait."_

_She turned and smiled at him, whispering a small thanks to Dende that the young warrior had had the sense to chase her before she left._

_"I...was thinking," the boldness was gone and his idea suddenly seemed lame, but it was too late to back out now, "with everything that's been happening the last few days...maybe it...uh, might not be safe for you to travel all that way by yourself." Yup, definitely lame. "If you want – and I'll understand if you don't – I could fly home with you...just to make sure you get back, uh, safely." It was so bad he was wincing at his own words. He felt like an actor in one of the after school specials Akira and Bra joked about all the time._

_Bra, to her credit, did not wince or even laugh. She simply smiled brilliantly up at him and said, "Thanks, Uubu. I think I'd feel much safer if you came with me."_

_"Really?" Uubu had expected to be shot down quickly, or maybe told 'thanks, but it's really okay.' From the moment she turned, he hadn't thought he'd had a chance in the world, but he certainly wasn't going to back out now that she'd said yes._

_Bra did her best not to laugh at the Mystical One as his eyes widened in surprise at her words. Yes, his 'pick up line' had been pretty bad, but she knew he wasn't the most experienced person in the world when it came to relationships and the important part was that he'd made it clear that he wanted to spend some more time with her – which was what she'd hoped he would do anyway._

_"Shall we go then," she asked sweetly._

_Uubu smiled bashfully and nodded as they leapt off of the Lookout and sailed towards the ground far below._

_Bra took the lead almost instantly, and chose to take the longest possible route back to West Capital. If Uubu noticed – or had complaints about – the extra travel time, he didn't meantion them._

_The two flew in relative silence, Uubu's burst of courage having somewhat evaporated since asking if he could fly with her and Bra unsure if she should let him make the next move or not. Finally the young saiyan decided that if anything was going to happen it was going to have to be her that initiated it._

_"Do you feel like going for a swim?" she asked Uubu as they flew over a small cluster of secluded lakes in a mountainous region._

_"Huh?" Uubu managed to get out before Bra suddenly dropped from the sky. The powerful human watched in surprise as she splashed into one of the larger lakes and disappeared from sight._

_A minute after she hit the water, Uubu began to grow a little worried. At a minute and a half, he was hovering just above the lake, looking for any sign of her. It was at this point that her hand reached up from the water, grabbed his foot and pulled him in._

_Uubu came up sputtering, cold, and with a deflated Mohawk hanging down in his eyes, but he was relieved that she hadn't drowned on him. Bra was giggling at her 'funny' joke._

_"See? Isn't this nice?" Bra asked as she lay on her back and floated on the surface of the water._

_Uubu quickly looked away. Bra's wet shirt was rather skin tight at the moment and it was clear that she also found the water to be a bit on the chilly side._

_She noticed his reaction of course, but she didn't stop what she was doing. Actually, she made sure she floated closer to him._

_"What's the matter, Uubu?" she asked slyly, messing with him like this made it easier to deal with the shift in their relationship. "Don't you like what you see?"_

_"I...uh..." was all he managed to get out._

_A kick of her foot brought her right in front of him, forcing him to turn once again, though not before his eyes slid along her body._

_"It's not like you can see anything, Uubu," she teased some more. "It's no big deal."_

_The young human swallowed hard, but still couldn't bring himself to turn and look at her._

_Bra did a little more kicking and maneuvered herself in front of him once again. "Don't you like the way I lo—"_

_Before she could finish her sentence, Uubu had grabbed the back of her shirt under the water and pulled down, dunking her and removing the source of his embarrassment._

_Now it was Bra's turn to come up sputtering. "Not funny!"_

_"Sorry," Uubu whispered, suddenly realizing that she had come up only a couple inches away from him._

_There was a brief moment of uncomfortable silence and then some unknown force took hold of Uubu and made him do something he never could have imagined himself doing even ten seconds earlier._

_He kissed her._

_It was soft and uncertain, as if he was expecting her to pull away and slap him at any second. But she didn't pull away; instead she put her arms around him and pulled him closer._

_The kiss might have lasted for an eternity, but was actually only a couple of seconds long and then they were back to the awkward silence where neither of them knew what to say. Fortunately Bra was thinking ahead, with one quick jerk of her arm, Uubu was under the water again and she was swimming away._

_They spent the next few hours acting in ways that Vegeta would have argued was inappropriate for the princess of the saiyan race to act, and that most people would have had trouble picturing one of the strongest warriors in the universe doing. They swam, they kissed, they dunked each other, they kissed...they kissed some more. Finally they waded out of the lake and dried in the setting sun while they talked with the occasional...distraction._

_Uubu had never actually kissed a girl – aside from his mother and a little girl in his village who gave him a peck on the cheek once before giggling and running away – he wasn't really sure what he was doing. Bra, on the other hand, had plenty of experience and – fortunately for Uubu – was more than willing to teach him. What Uubu lacked in experience he more than made up for in willingness to practice._

_It was well after dark before they finally made it back to Capsule Corp. Bra wasn't sure what time it was or who would still be awake. Kanata was standing on top of the great domed building, but he either didn't notice or didn't care about them as then floated up to her window._

_Uubu tried saying goodbye quickly, most likely fearing being seen by Vegeta, but Bra wouldn't let him leave without one last kiss...which became another kiss...and another...and in a flash the 'goodbye' had lasted over an hour._

_Finally – after Bra glanced at the clock and noticed that it was after three in the morning – the last goodbye was said and Uubu was flying unsteadily towards his village with a large goofy grin on his face while Bra was lying in her bed with the same grin on her face._

ooo

Uubu finished his story and looked around at the group that had coaxed it out of him. No one said anything until finally Goten started chuckling.

"If I was you Uubu – and thankfully I'm not – I would pray that Vegeta never hears you were looking at his daughter in a wet T-shirt!" Some how, the youngest Son boy had managed to pick the least appropriate part of the story to focus on.

"Yes," a voice from behind them said as the person Uubu was supposed to be praying would never hear that story walked into the room, "You should be praying about that."

The room was empty except for Uubu and Vegeta in an instant. They were all brave and powerful warriors and Uubu's friends beyond that, but none of them wanted anything to do with the coming terror.

Vegeta glared at Uubu for a moment or two, and the young human was sure he could see his own death reflecting out of the Saiyan Prince's eyes.

"Not a terribly long time ago, you would already be dead for what you admitted to doing with my daughter," Vegeta began almost casually, his eyes flashing dangerously. "But, those times – unfortunately – are gone, and if we are heading to a fight, you are most likely going to be needed, so I have decided not to kill you today…"

The saiyan smirked and Uubu swallowed hard, duly noting that Vegeta had not said that he wouldn't kill him tomorrow.

"…however," Vegeta continued, "we will discuss this again and you will work very, _very_ hard to convince me that there is some speck of you worthy of even being looked at by my daughter. Do you understand?"

Uubu nodded quickly.

Vegeta smiled, "Glad to hear it." He turned and started to walk out of the room, but at the door he stopped and glanced back at the young warrior. "By the way, if I hear that you were ogling my daughter's body again, you'll be dead before you even realize your mistake."

ooo

"Shortly after I left with the dragon, I realized that the Shadow Dragons might not be the last threat to the Earth. For a while I thought that my friends and family would probably be able to handle anything that showed up...but they didn't want to grow stronger or train themselves to be more powerful, at least not full time...they just weren't like Vegeta and I were," Goku paused for a moment as a look of thoughtful consideration crossed his face. "I guess Uubu was close to what Vegeta and I were, but even he had other things on his mind besides training all the time and when I saw that Vegeta couldn't reach Super Saiyan Four anymore, I knew something had to be done."

"Why?" Akira couldn't help but ask.

A goofy lopsided grin flashed across his face and for the first time Akira understood why Vegeta often called his friend a 'clown.' "Our enemies have never grown weaker. Every fight was against a more powerful enemy than the one before it. I beat Freiza when he was supposedly fighting at one hundred percent power, but when he showed up on Earth he was already stronger than he'd been when I beat him. After him, the androids showed up and were even stronger than Super Saiyans, and once we were powerful enough to defeat them, Cell was already waiting. Buu, Babi, Super Seventeen, and Omega Shenron, all of them were stronger than the one before them..."

"So what's this have to do with me? Why didn't you just come back or do something to make Vegeta stronger?"

"Are you kidding?" Goku nearly fell over just at the suggestion of it. "If I did something to make Vegeta stronger, he'd never forgive me!" The saiyan coughed a little to get his voice raspy and then - in a pretty good Vegeta-voice - said, "Kakarot! What the hell have you done to me? I could have reached this power on my own! I don't need your help; I am the Prince of all Saiyans!"

Akira couldn't help but chuckle, "Yeah, he would say that, wouldn't he?"

"Yup," Goku laughed, "and then he'd insist on fighting me over and over for all of eternity when I'm finally allowed to come back."

There was a moment of silence where both thought about the possibility of having Vegeta chasing them around demanding rematches for the entirety of their afterlives and then simultaneously shuddered at the thought. And then Akira asked the question that he'd wanted to ask since he'd sat on King Kai's planet and heard the words "welcome back, Goku" come out of the Supreme Kai's mouth.

"So why am I...I mean, why do I..." Akira's voice trailed off. He did his best not to think about this subject at all costs, it was just too weird and too hard to contemplate. Plus, he didn't like thinking of himself as some sort of pervert for loving Pan and that was always the feeling these thoughts ended with.

"Why did the Supreme Kai think you had my soul?" Goku filled in for him. Akira looked shocked that the older saiyan knew so much. "I don't just spend all my time training, you know. I check up on everyone from time to time too."

"So?"

"Well, to be honest, I don't really understand it myself," Goku laughed, scratching the back of his head and looking sheepish. "Shenron tried to explain it to me, but...my mind kind of wandered while he was talking."

Akira's mouth hung open in shock. Piccolo had said Goku wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but that was apparently a gross understatement. "But...but you said you'd..."

"Hey, I just said I didn't understand the whole soul thing, I can still tell you how you got it. Besides, Shenron's really boring when he starts explaining things, and he just goes on and on... he might even be worse than Porunga."

Akira stared at the legendary warrior for a moment, trying to wrap his head around the words that were coming out of Goku's mouth.

Shenron? Porunga? Talking at length about something? That didn't really match up with what he'd seen and heard of the dragons, normally they were just in a big hurry to go back to sleep or whatever they did when they weren't granting wishes.

Goku noticed the confused look on the young man's face and realized that he was getting a bit off topic. "It doesn't matter, the important part is that Shenron explained it and I didn't listen..." he stopped and thought for a second before his eyes lit up as he regained his train of thought, "Actually, that wasn't the important part. The important part was that Shenron told me he couldn't make life out of nothing."

Akira was squeezing the bridge of his nose by this point, certain that a headache was about to break out any moment. Why couldn't Goku just get to the point and stop telling him all these random things he didn't care about. "So how does that explain me?" he asked at last.

"Well, let's just say that he needed me to be the template and a little piece of me to get you up and running."

Akira was beginning to think that Goku wasn't as slow as everyone seemed to think he was. The way the older warrior kept slipping around the answers Akira wanted to hear was clearly the work of a diabolical mastermind whose sole purpose in life was driving Akira up the wall. "So what does that make me?"

"A saiyan, obviously, because I'm a saiyan. If he'd been using Bulma as his template then you would have been human...and probably a girl," he smiled and winked at Akira, "Be thankful he was using a guy, Chi-Chi always said there was no way any of the injuries I got from my fights would ever compare to the pain of childbirth and I get the feeling she wasn't joking."

Akira's brow furrowed at the random statements the older saiyan kept making. "But why am I...whatever the hell I am?" he yelled in frustration. "I've got your goddamn soul! How does that even happen?"

"Hey calm down, I'm getting there."

"Calm down?" Akira wanted to strangle the man, but was certain it would get him no where, "How can you tell me to calm down? I'm in love with your granddaughter and I have your soul! Do you have any idea how messed up that is?"

Goku started chuckling, "It's not my fault you fell in love with her, I just figured the Earth needed a protector who had my kind of power. Making Pan a boyfriend wasn't really what I was shooting for."

Akira was rethinking his earlier decision on strangling Goku. His hands twisted into claws and moved as though they were seeking the legendary saiyans throat, but then he closed them into fists, let out a deep breath and whispered, "Just tell me why I have your soul and what it means... I'm not... you, am I?"

Goku's smile faded into a look that only those who have seen so much life can give to those who haven't. "Shenron couldn't give your body the kind of power I needed you to have and couldn't give you life without a little piece of me. Your life force flows from your soul, just as your power does, and that's the sort of thing that can't be created from nothing, without me giving up part of myself, you couldn't exist."

"But...don't...don't you _need_ your soul?"

"Well, it's not like I gave you all of it, if I did you'd probably be a lot more like me and the thing between you and Pan would be a lot more creepy."

"Thanks," Akira groaned and shook his head. "So wha—"

Goku suddenly grimaced as though feeling a moment of discomfort and his body seemed to flicker in and out of existence. "I guess this is the end of our little chat," the saiyan said with a smile as he placed a hand on Akira's shoulder and looked into the younger man's eyes. "Just don't forget that you are still you, no matter how you were created...and take care of my granddaughter, I expect lots of great grandbabies some day!"

Before Akira could even sputter any sort of comment on how he had no intention of discussing that with Goku, the former savior of the Earth faded away, leaving the young man staring at the spot his creator had been sitting.

He was still sitting there when Pan entered the room and told him that they had reached the other timeline and would be landing soon. Akira simply nodded dumbly to her and then went back to staring off into space.

Pan gave serious consideration to asking him what was going on, but at the moment there were far more pressing matters to deal with than trying to figure whatever was wrong with Akira out. Hopefully he'd tell her soon enough anyway.

Ten minutes later a soft bump – announcing to the passengers that the ship had landed – awoke Akira from his thoughts and he joined the others as they stepped off the ship and into what could only be described as a nightmare…

o

o

A/N: Okay, first – as always – sorry this is late and probably not terribly good. I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go to a family reunion (flight leaves at 6am) and realized that this needed to be updated tonight or it wouldn't be updated for another week and a half. So, hopefully your dislike (which I share) or the Goku scene will be tempered by the fact that I'm giving up a few precious hours of sleep so I can get this finished.

I heard a rumor that fanfic writers are now getting in trouble for responding to reviews, so I'll not be doing that this time around. I'll just say thanks for all of them; the response I've gotten for this story is overwhelming and humbling. You guys are awesome (and the only reason I haven't thrown in the towel on this story). Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, if you did (or didn't) please let me know. Thanks again!


	72. Welcome to the Future

**Chapter 72: Welcome to the Future**

o

Once the city had been bustling with life, its denizens hurrying from one place to the next like little ants rushing back and forth from a crumb of bread to their hole, now it was just another necropolis, one of many, a monument to those who had died in the early days of the war… or maybe just in the early hours of the war. The conquest of the planet had taken almost no time at all it seemed. Three days, maybe four and the world government had surrendered, or at least they would have if any of them had survived.

The alien who had called himself the Master and his army identical warriors had appeared as if our of thin air one day and demanded that the inhabitants of the Earth kneel before him and live under his rule or live in slavery and die like the animals they were. Over the years the people of Earth had heard some interesting threats, but they never took any of them very seriously because no matter how many times weird things had happened on the planet, the strange things always seemed to go away on their own and the world returned to its normal state shortly there after.

This time was different. This time the threat didn't go away, no champion came forth to stop it, no unexplainable magic fixed all of their problems, and the darkness overwhelmed the helpless masses.

Within seconds of the deadline the Master had set for their surrender, the first town vanished from the face of the planet. Parsley Town was simply there one moment and gone in a blinding flash the next. Soon others began suffering similar fates and finally, the demons that the Master commanded began moving against the major cities of the planet. They would appear destroy dozens of buildings and then vanish just long enough for the people to go out searching for family members who had been lost during the attacks. And then the monsters would reappear and attack those who had ventured outside or would simply begin blowing up more buildings.

The once beautiful planet had been turned into a nightmarish hell in a matter of days. Eventually the attacks stopped and the roundups began. The villains would march through the remains of the cities and towns grabbing as many people as they could, locking them in large cages and then taking them to the slave camps. If the planet had become hell, then the slave camps were the deepest depths of the burning lake.

The camps were something that those few who escaped didn't like to talk or think about, but whenever they were alone, the images of all they had seen and been forced to endure always returned.

A man sitting alone in a bare room overlooking the destruction that had once been a magnificent part of the city shuddered as he tried to push the thoughts away. For a moment it seemed as though he was going to be stuck reliving his tortured past for another evening, but then a strange rumbling echoed through the ruins of the city.

The large, strange-looking ship shook the skeletal remains of the once incredible skyline as it slowly sank into the depths of the dead city. From his vantage point in one of the bombed out skyscrapers still clinging to the past and standing tall despite the incredible damage it had taken, the man watched curiously as a dozen people stepped out of the ship and looked around. He was too far away and the air was too thick with pollutants for his one eye to make out what they were looking at or who they were, but he could think of only one group of people who would come to this cemetery and because of that, he was already reaching for his walkie-talkie to ask for instructions.

As the person on the other side quietly gave him his orders, the gray haired man could barely keep from angrily demanding to be allowed to do what he desperately wanted to do, but if the group of strangers were made up of _them_ then it was possible they would hear him if he raised his voice and that would ruin everything.

No one knew the true extent of their powers, though he was sure most of what was credited towards them was simply the result of fear induced exaggeration, but he wasn't about to try and find out what was the truth and what was the myth.

He whispered a reply and shut of the device, wondering if he could really bring himself to just walk away.

For a long moment he sat in silence, watching as the shapes of the group looked around at the broken buildings that were actually more like enormous tombstones rising out of the mist, marking the spots were thousands had died in the first few days of the attacks. Though he couldn't see them, he knew that even now, leaflets – yellowed with the passage of time and exposure to the harsh elements – were being pushed around by the faint breeze that continuously wound its way through the vacant city streets as though pushed by the spirits of the city's dead. The sheets of paper had been made by those who had lost loved ones in the initial attacks, they all had pictures of lost family members and friends, hoping that somehow they had lived through the carnage, but they had all been made in vain.

No one had survived the initial attacks. No one had survived the later attacks. The monsters were frighteningly efficient killing machines. Even those who had made the leaflets had most likely been dead within a few days.

The man looked out of the broken window one more time, still wondering if he could bring himself to walk away without knowing if the newcomers were servants of the Master. If they were, then his weapons would do nothing to them anyway. Many of the survivors from the one sided battles that had been waged as the Master and his minions conquered the planet and the scant few who had escaped the slave camps – as he had – swore that the monsters were invincible, but the man knew that they weren't.

He was one of the few who knew what the demons really were, he knew they were flesh and blood, they could be hurt, they could die, it just didn't seem like it when they laughed off machine gun fire and caught mortar shells with their bare hands.

He knew they could die because he'd been told that Gohan and his friends and family who were like him had been among the first to be killed. It had been years since he'd seen Gohan, but he'd instantly recognized the transformation the monsters used. After all, how many people could possibly turn their hair gold?

The group was now walking towards the crumbling remains of the Capsule Corp. dome. From their body language, at least a few of them were upset about what they saw… or maybe they were just excited about their handiwork, it was tough to tell.

Finally, he decided that he had to at least see if they were what he thought they probably were. He reached down and lifted the old hunting rifle he almost always carried with him. There was no way it would hurt one of them, but it could protect him from any wild animals that might have been lured into the city by the smell of death… at least that's what he told himself.

In truth, if he met anything hostile, it would most likely be the end of his life. Despite the fact that he still had the considerable arm strength he'd possessed as a young man, it was difficult to aim a gun quickly with only one arm.

Just as he peered through the scope, one of the people standing near the Capsule Corp. ruins turned and almost looked right at him. His breath caught in his throat, it was the face that had haunted his nightmares for years; he forced himself to watch for a moment longer and found another of the demons.

The rest of those in the group were clearly not the same as those who had conquered the planet for the Master, but they also didn't act like slaves. If he wasn't already planning on throwing his life away, he might have wondered who and what they were, but all he could do was stare at those who had taken his wife's life… just before they removed his arm and his left eye.

He lowered the gun and looked at the other weapon he'd lugged up the rickety stairs. It was another relatively useless weapon for a one-armed man, but he insisted on keeping it with him. This one probably wouldn't do much more damage than the gun, but he wasn't looking to kill them, he knew that was impossible for some one like him… probably impossible for anyone left alive. He just wanted to show them that he wouldn't be afraid of them even if they could kill him, that they might have conquered and enslaved most of the planet, but there were still pockets of resistance that would always exist.

He lifted the rocket launcher and propped it up on the window sill, using the decaying building as his second arm. It only held two rockets, but that didn't matter, it would take an impossible amount of luck for him to stay alive long enough to fire the second anyway.

He lined up the site and grinned. Perhaps when he reached the afterlife, he'd be allowed to have his long, blond hair back.

His first rocket exploded out of the tube and raced along its deadly course towards the evil beings below.

ooo

Of the twelve Z Fighters standing in front of the Capsule Corp ruins, only two were prepared for an attack. They were also the only two who were unimpressed by the incredible destruction all around them or the smell of death and disease that hung in the thick, dirty air. They were the only two who had helped do all this and more to dozens if not hundreds of other worlds.

Vegeta and Kanata both turned at the sound of the rocket being fired at them, though neither bothered to power up. Vegeta because he didn't want to alert anyone with ki sensitivity who might pick up the energy spike, and Kanata because it was unnecessary, he had plenty of power to deal with such a pathetic attack.

Vegeta was the one who dealt with the missile, simply stepping forward and snatching it out of the air. Even suppressing his power level, the missile was little more than a toy to him. His ebony eyes followed the trail of smoke leading back to window half way up a nearby skyscraper that was somehow still standing despite the incredible amount of damage it had sustained.

A faintly glowing ball of energy appeared in Kanata's hand as his lips peeled back in a wicked smirk, but Vegeta reached out and grabbed his wrist before he could level the building.

"Use your brain," the Saiyan Prince snapped, "if you destroy the building you're enemies will know you're here in an instant! Besides," he looked down at the missile which had run out of power and was now simply waiting for its pressure sensors to hit something so it could explode, "this is a human weapon. Not the sort of thing that the Arlean or a clone would be attacking with."

The rest of the group were now standing next to the two warriors, their eyes glancing around the city-turned-necropolis as they searched for other possible threats.

ooo

It had been many years since King Kai had felt something that brought his head whipping around with enough speed to cause his neck to crack, but that was exactly what had just happened.

Less than a decade ago, he would have had a short, pretty raven haired girl begging to know what he had just felt, her eyes intently locked on him as though she was trying to somehow force him to have information about the man she loved. Those days had passed by many years ago by most people's standards, though kais rarely concerned themselves with such small passages of time, now only one of the thirteen warriors he had trained from Earth (or at least claimed he had trained) remained with him and that one was too busy spending all of his time meditating under a tree to bother noticing when the overseer of an entire quadrant of the universe looked startled.

For the life of him, King Kai couldn't figure out why Piccolo insisted on spending so much time floating just off the ground while sitting in the lotus position. It seemed like there must be something else that could interest him in the afterlife, but this was how he chose to spend the majority of his time. The kai wasn't sure how good of training it was to sit there all day, but Piccolo had come in second at the last Otherworld Tournament – losing to Vegeta in a closely fought final match – so 24/7 meditation must have some benefits.

Of course, that had been several years ago and the power dynamics of the group had changed considerably since then. Right now Piccolo would probably struggle to hold his own against the fifth strongest of the Z Fighters, and it wouldn't be long before Kumo was pushing him too.

In another fifty years, when the next tournament was held, King Kai was going to get to spend the entire time relaxing and gloating to West Kai while his fighters once again mopped the floor with the competition. In the last one, there wasn't a single non-Z-Fighter after the second round and the look on that fat bastard's face had been priceless.

There was a sudden whisper in the wind and suddenly a powerful energy signature was standing behind the kai, waking him from his pleasant memories and bringing him back to what had startled him.

"Hey King Kai," the still boyish, but deepening more and more every day, voice of Kumo said uncertainly, "I think I felt something weird just a second ago… but I think I felt it wrong or something, 'cause it couldn't really have been what it felt like…"

It was hard for the kai to tell if he was amazed at the boy's impressive telepathic powers or just the fact that such mental strength could come from someone with Goku's genes coursing through his veins. Whatever it was, King Kai knew that Kumo would have been special had he lived through the events that had wiped out nearly all of the Z Fighters and their families.

He would be impressive here as well, of course, but the skills that he could have learned training under his father, uncle, Vegeta, and Akira would have made him a valuable asset to the protectors of Earth. He would most likely never challenge Vegeta or Akira in brute strength, but he had probably surpassed Akira's mental abilities after less than a year of training (and at the tender age of five) while Vegeta and the Gohan had remained superior to him for only a year and a half after that. If the young man had lived, he probably could have been a kami… though it was a terrifying thought that a saiyan could have become the god of an entire planet (and even scarier that the job had actually been offered to Goku at one point).

"What did you feel?" the kai asked kindly, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses as he watched his young pupil trying to think of how to explain something that no doubt left him feeling like he might be losing it.

"It was… Vegeta, I think… and Dad and Uncle Gohan and Pan are there too, on Earth I mean." He paused and squeezed his eyes shut with a look of intense – almost painful – concentration on his face. "They… they can't be on Earth, can they? I can still feel them here too. Dad's with Mom and Vegeta feels like he's beating up half of the Eastern Quadrant's fighters."

King Kai hoped that West Kai was watching that.

"Well, if you can feel them on Earth and feel them here, what does it mean?" the kai probed.

The young man opened his eyes and looked at his master in confusion. "Well, either there are two of them or someone's figured out how to make his life force feel like other people…"

"Hmm," King Kai smiled, "I suppose it could be either of those. Which do you think it is?"

Again Kumo closed his eyes and struggled to make sense out of what he was feeling, trying to turn the power levels he could sense even at this great distance into images the way King Kai had been trying to teach him. The kai had said that the technique was difficult for a mortal to master – impossible seemed more likely in Kumo's estimation – but it was worth a shot.

ooo

Akira's eyes focused on the window the fading vapor trailed back to as his mind tried to lock onto the ki that must be in there. Whoever it was, he wasn't a warrior like his friends. The person's life force was definitely there, but it was so weak that Akira wouldn't have risked teleporting to it over a much greater distance than what he was looking at now.

"I've got him," the young man whispered as his hand touched his forehead and he vanished.

ooo

For a moment, the youngest of the saiyans thought he almost saw something, but whatever it was had vanished before it had fully materialized and his surprise had cost him the precious concentration he needed to form the images. It was hopeless now, but he could always make educated guesses, King Kai would explain what was going on to him regardless of whether or not he came up with the right answer.

"I think there are two of them."

"Nice guess," King Kai replied with a small smirk. The boy had been incredibly close to doing something the kai didn't think a saiyan could actually do, perhaps he would have made a good kami after all. "Your father and all of the other Z Fighters are both on Earth and here… and at least one 'real' Akira is on Earth, perhaps even two."

Kumo's eyes widened, "You mean… you mean he's back? He went back to Earth?"

"It would seem so."

ooo

Akira appeared inside of the dingy room, right behind a man with nappy gray and possibly blond streaked hair who was lining up his sites and preparing to fire another missile.

"You know," the young man said conversationally, "most people would have gotten the hint that that wasn't going to work when their first shot failed so spectacularly."

The man whirled around in shock, his one eye wide with fear and then narrowing with hatred. In a heartbeat he had dropped the missile launcher, snatched up an old hunting rifle that was lying on the floor next to him and pointed it in Akira's general direction.

The room echoed with the loud gunshot as the man pulled the trigger.

Akira didn't even flinch as his hand shot up and snagged the bullet from the air. "This really isn't getting you anywhere," he said as he rolled his eyes. Taking his eyes off of his opponent would have been a costly mistake were he either far weaker or dealing with someone much stronger at that moment.

As it was, he was still mildly surprised when the man rushed at him, holding his gun like a club. The butt of the gun slammed into Akira's head with shattering force… and indeed, the gun did shatter.

"Damn it! That could have hurt!" the young man yelled as he glared at the disfigured man.

The man was fairly tall; perhaps a head taller than Akira and the way he held himself led Akira to believe that he had probably once been in peak physical condition for a non-Z Fighter level human. There was a jagged scar running down the side of his face which had probably been given to him when his eye was destroyed. He couldn't have been much older than Videl, he was definitely older than Goten, Trunks, and their better halves.

The man looked at the broken gun for a moment and then turned his one eye back to Akira. "Let's see what you got, monster!" he growled as he swung his fist at the younger man's head, forcing Akira to duck to keep the man from breaking his hand.

"Cut it out!" he yelled as he once again dodged an attack. "I don't want to fight you, I don't even know why you're attacking me…" but suddenly he did know. Like sunlight breaking through the clouds, realization struck him and left him feeling uncomfortable. "I'm not one of them," he whispered.

The man didn't reply. He just kept up his futile attack.

Akira's hand materialized around the man's wrist and held him firmly. "I'm not one of the clones. I'm not even…" he nearly groaned at the thought of how lame and unbelievable this was going to sound, "…from this timeline. My friends and I are here to help you."

The man's expression was impossible to truly describe, but Akira thought it probably lay somewhere in between incredulousness, barely contained laughter, anger, suspicion, and hatred.

But at least he wasn't trying to break his hand against Akira's head anymore.

"I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's the truth," the young man said as he released the man's wrist.

This time the man actually did laugh, a hallow, soulless laughter that seemed to hang in the thick air around them. "Why do you things always feel the need to make jokes like this?" he asked, "Is our suffering so funny to you?" He looked down at his feet and sighed, "Just kill me quickly; I won't go back to the slave camps… at least this way I can be with Erasa again."

"I'm not…" Akira began, but stopped when he realized how pointless his claim of innocence would be. It was pretty hard to argue against what this man had seen during the last however many years. "Forget it," he reached out and grabbed the man's hand once again, "I'll just get the others to explain it to you, maybe they'll have some luck."

He gave the wall a kick, knocking a large hole in it and then leapt from the tenth story of the building, dragging the man with him.

ooo

Gohan watched in surprise as Akira dropped to the ground, catching the man he was pulling with him as soon as his feet were on the ground. It had taken the young man far longer to deal with whoever it was that had fired at them than Gohan had expected.

Akira half dragged, half carried his prisoner over to the group and set the man down gently. "Look, see? They don't all look like me, we aren't just a bunch of clones." Of course his argument would have been better if Kanata had not been standing there, but it was the best he could do.

The man's one eye traveled along the group for a moment and then centered on Gohan. "No… you're dead," he whispered.

Gohan's eyes widened in shock, even with his injuries and the years that had been so cruel to him, the saiyan recognized the man in front of him in an instant. "Sharpner?"

ooo

Kumo's eyes fluttered shut for a second and a moment later Pan appeared next to him, her fingers still touching her forehead.

"What's so urgent?" she asked quickly, her dark eyes noting that whatever it was, it wasn't enough for Piccolo to stop meditating… not that many things were.

King Kai opened his mouth to gently explain the situation to her, but before he could, Kumo blurted out, "Akira's on Earth! So are you and all the other Z Fighers!"

The kai scowled at his young protégé and smacked him on the back of the head. "How can someone with as much mental power as you have so little tact?"

Kumo grinned up at him impishly and then looked back at Pan, his eyes shinning with excitement.

Pan opened and closed her mouth several times, trying to make words come out, but all of her questions kept jamming up inside her throat. Finally she managed to choke out a "What are you talking about?"

King Kai sighed, "I'll show you everything, but you might as well hold on for a moment, the others are already on their way… well, Vegeta's still playing, but he'll be by in a few minutes."

"It's finally going to happen then?" the deep, calm voice of Piccolo asked, though the namek neither moved from his meditation position, nor looked up at them.

"Yes," King Kai replied. "I think the battle for Earth will be starting up very soon."

o

o

A/N: I had really hoped that I'd be able to finish the little what's-been-happening-on-Earth thing in one chapter, but once it reached 4,000 words and was only half way done; I figured I should just turn it into two chapters. The important thing is that Kanata and co. are on Earth so they can start fighting the big bad soon. Yay! Anyway, thanks for all of the reviews (nearly 800… freaky).

In response to absolutely none of the reviews I've received: I'm glad that most of you liked the scene with Goku and the Uubu and Bra flashback. If anyone noticed that Goku didn't have a clue as to what exactly Akira was or how he was really made, that's because I've come to the realization that I don't know how to put the whole thing into words, so Goku's vague answer is the best I can do and his confusion is my own. Anyone who may or may not have thanked me for giving up a little sleep so I could post are most definitely welcome (and thanks for the hug), I'd just thank them (and possibly anyone else) for reviewing. Anyway to those who reviewed – and I'm not saying anyone did or that this is a response to them – thanks. I hope you enjoyed this chapter; hopefully the next one will be out soon.


	73. Not His Fault

**Chapter 73: Not His Fault**

o

"Sharpner?"

The rest of the Z Fighters looked from Gohan to the filth covered man who had attacked them and then back to Gohan.

"You... uh, know him, dad?" Pan asked.

"We went to high school together," Gohan replied shaking himself out a daze.

"You're father thought I was an asshole," the man added with a crooked smile that displayed several chipped and missing teeth. His body seemed relaxed, but Gohan could see that Sharpner's one eye was still watching him suspiciously, looking for some sort of sign that the demi-saiyan was not who he claimed to be.

"You weren't that bad..." Gohan's voice trailed off as a small grin spread across his face, "well, now that I think about it, you kind of were... but only for those first couple of months... and whenever you hit on Videl... and every time we played baseball in P.E."

"I think they get the point," Sharpner smirked, the suspicion in his eye had abated somewhat.

There was a long moment of silence while Gohan debated how he was supposed to ask the question that needed to be asked. It somehow didn't seem right to just say 'so, what happened to the Earth? It looks like shit.' but he wasn't sure what else to say.

"So, uh, what... um, how..."

"How'd the whole planet go straight to hell? Or how did such a handsome fellow like myself end up a broken down cripple?"

"Er, both, I guess."

Sharpner stared at him for a moment and then asked, "You really aren't from here, are you? That..." his eye burned with hatred for a half second and then returned to normal as though nothing had happened, "..._thing_ wasn't lying when he said you guys were from another timeline or whatever, was he?"

"I'm the only one from this version of the future," Kanata cut in. "The rest of them just sort of invited themselves along for the ride."

Sharpners eye narrowed as he focused on Kanata for a moment and then he turned his back on the saiyan and said, "It's not safe for us to be out here, _they_ sometimes check the cities for slaves who have escaped and are stupid enough to stand around outside. Come with me, I'll explain it all while we walk."

Without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heel and walked back towards the crumbling inner city. The others glanced at each other and then followed, with Gohan hurrying to catch up to his old friend.

ooo

"Can we try and talk to Akira, King Kia?" Pan asked as the mental picture she was getting showed the group of Z Fighters following a crippled man through the city.

King Kai was silent for a moment and then shook his head, "He's refusing to answer."

She was shocked, why on earth wouldn't he want to talk to them? She hadn't seen him in ten years, hadn't even heard anything about him in months, and he… could he be mad because of what she'd said to him during that final meeting? Didn't he know how much she regretted it?

"Can I try and talk to him?"

"His, uh, 'reply' when I tried contacting him just now was rather… emphatic. He doesn't want to talk to us."

"What did he say?" Uubu's curiosity was piqued now.

The kia grimaced, "You don't want to know."

ooo

The band of time travelers followed Sharpner through the twisted paths of debris and burned-out buildings. Only their crippled guide seemed to be capable of speech as he told them about the early days of the Arlean's conquest of the planet, of all of the death and despair, and of the ultimate enslaving of the human race. Gohan walked next to the limping Sharpner listening intently, behind him most of the rest of the Z Fighters were grouped together doing their best to both listen and stare at the dead city, and bringing up the rear was Kanata whose eyes stared straight ahead, giving no sign that he was listening to the story or was even aware of his surroundings.

But he was listening and he was aware of the crumbling buildings and the occasional skeletal remains that they past.

_Very_ aware.

After what seemed like hours of walking, the group came to a stop across the remains of a street from a rather unimpressive building – neither better off nor more destroyed than any other they'd seen.

"Wait here," Sharpner told them. "I have to talk to our leader before I can bring you in..." his eyes shifted in Akira and Kanata's direction "...I don't know if all of you will be welcome."

Gohan frowned, but nodded. Sharpner – and presumably this mysterious leader as well – would know that if any of the Z Fighters wanted to enter that building, there would be little that could stop them. Still, the survivors of the Arlean's conquest wanted to feel in control of the situation and Gohan wouldn't deny them that... hopefully the others wouldn't either.

Sharpner cast one last icy glare at the two versions of Akira and then headed into the building.

"This is a waste of time," Vegeta whispered in a not-so-quiet voice. "They won't be of any help to us."

"Probably not," the scholar agreed, "but maybe we can help them."

"That's not why we're here."

Gohan wasn't sure how to respond to that. It was true that they had come back to help Kanata fight the Arlean, not try and help a group of fugitives… still, it seemed like talking to this leader Sharpner had mentioned couldn't hurt and perhaps they could lend a helping hand to some of the survivors outside of defeating their oppressor.

He glanced at Kanata who was standing perfectly still; staring with unblinking eyes at the building Sharpner had entered. This was technically the saiyan from this timeline's mission, so any decision would naturally be up to him, but he hadn't said anything about following Sharpner or about waiting or about... actually, Gohan couldn't think of the last time Kanata had even opened his mouth. Had he said anything since they reached this timeline? He didn't talk to them while they were on the ship, that much was for sure.

"Ahh!"

Gohan's head snapped around and locked onto a small, dark skinned child who had just popped out from behind a pile of trash and was charging Kanata. The kid was holding something shiny in his or her hand as he ran.

Kanata did not react to the sudden cry, nor did he look back as she bore down on him. The child drew back the object and slammed it against the base of his skull.

The knife blade snapped under the force of the blow, but Kanata did not even blink.

The child fell back and looked at the weapon in surprise. For a moment, all he or she could do was stare and then, with a growl of annoyance, the little human reached down and grabbed a rock and prepared to throw it at him.

Without even showing any signs that he'd felt the attacks or seen his attacker, Kanata backhanded the child into a crumbling wall.

The child hit the wall with enough force to cause parts of it to crack under the pressure – which wasn't saying much since it was a miracle the wall was still standing anyway – and then the young human slumped to the ground.

Pan, Krillin, and Uubu were by the little boy or girl's side in an instant. Vegeta cocked an eyebrow in Kanata's direction, but said nothing while the others stared either in shock or anger at the older version of Akira.

"Why the hell did you do that?" Akira demanded.

Kanata continued staring straight ahead.

"You could have killed him!" Yamcha yelled.

Kanata might as well have been a statue for all the response he gave.

Before any other accusations or questions could be launched at the saiyan, Sharpner's limping form emerged from the shadows of the building across the street and headed towards them.

"He wants to see you," he informed them, eyes betraying the fact that he didn't like the idea, "_all_ of you."

And without another he turned and headed back towards the building. Pan gently lifted the unconscious child and the Z Fighters followed the limping man.

ooo

The deceased Z Fighters were feeling restless now. King Kai had told them he would rather not have such a large group of people pressing down on him while he transferred images to them all day and that he would inform them when something important happened. It made sense, of course, but that didn't mean that they liked it. They all wanted to know what was happening and weren't about to leave the small planet, but there was little to do there except sit around and stare at each other.

And so that was what they basically did.

Vegeta offered to spare with Uubu at one point, but King Kai quickly put a stop to that, claiming that he was not in the mood to have his car, house, trees, or planet destroyed.

Piccolo had no problem waiting; he simply went back to doing what he almost always did: meditate. Even he, though, seemed to be a little more on edge as every few seconds he would open one eye and glance King Kai's way.

King Kai, however, was simply standing with his back to the group, his head tilted up at the yellow clouded sky that seemed to stretch out for eternity, with his eyes closed and his mind carefully following the group of humans, saiyans, and one android as they were shown the harsh reality that this timeline had to offer.

ooo

The inside of the building smelled even fouler than the rest of the city. It wasn't as dark as Pan had thought it would be though, the fact that it was missing the majority of its roof and that all of the nearby skyscrapers had either been destroyed in the initial attacks or had collapsed years later allowed a decent amount of light into the building.

The remains of numerous desks and chairs were strewn about almost haphazardly, most probably hadn't been touched or moved in ten years. Some were even stained with dark spots that could only have been made by one thing...

"We buried the bodies that were left in here to rot," Sharpner said suddenly, either guessing at her thoughts or just to make conversation. "It seemed like the decent thing to do..."

Trunks was looking around with an expression that said his mind was close to putting together the pieces of a puzzle he'd been working on, but it was just barely out of reach. "I know this place," he said as his brain attempted to picture the building whole and the desks and chairs intact. "I've... I've been here..."

"It used to be..." Sharpner started to say, but before he could finish Trunks had it.

"A lab! This was a government facility for designing new technology that Capsule Corp wasn't interested in working on!" Were they not standing in a place that had been a grave for many people he'd probably worked with from time to time he would have congratulated himself for figuring it out.

"Yes," Sharpner said with something that was close to a grin, but was missing the mirth that should have been there, "that's right. They even tested some of their breakthroughs here." He led them to a large doorway where two heavy steal doors had been pried open.

Through the doorway was a staircase that led down into an inky darkness.

"Home sweat home," Sharpner said with another of his ghost grins and then he started down the stairs with the Z Fighters following right behind him.

ooo

Lower and lower they descended, with only the sounds of their friends' breathing to remind them that they weren't alone. Down below everyone, except for Eighteen who wasn't equipped to detect life forces, could feel a large number of people growing closer and closer with each step.

Finally, a small glimmer of light could be seen and many in the group had to fight their desire to just leap into the air and hurry towards it and away from the oppressive darkness.

When at long last they emerged from the stairway, they found themselves in a large – one might even call it "cavernous" – room. The underground shelter was warm, border lining on being uncomfortably so, thanks to several large fires which gave everyone their light, those of the Z Fighters that cared couldn't see where the smoke was going, but the air in the room was not filled with any more pollutants than what they'd been treated to in the city. There were piles of debris and trash, probably brought down from the surface, being used to create little walls to give the people as much privacy as possible, though most weren't more than four or five feet high.

Everywhere they looked ghost-like people were peering out from behind their walls or peeking over the tops of piles of junk to see the new comers. Without fail every one of them ducked back down again as soon as they caught sight of either Akira or Kanata.

Despite the number of people they could feel in this place, the room was strangely silent, so quiet that they could actually hear the popping of the fire wood and their own footfalls as they walked.

Akira was glancing around the room nervously. He'd never been looked at the way these people looked at him. They feared him, at least on the surface, but deep down he could also see their hatred. It was unnerving.

The child in Pan's arms stirred and then cried out in surprise with the realization that it was being carried by a stranger. The dark skinned human struggled desperately to free itself from the demi-saiyan's grasp and then bolted the moment Pan set it down, but not before casting a look of anger in Kanata and Akira's direction. Akira looked slightly saddened to see another person look at him like that; Kanata didn't even seem to notice.

Sharpner all the way to the other side of the huge underground room and then stopped when he reached a door labeled 'Administrator' and said, "He's in here."

He opened the door and then stepped to the side so they could enter.

As they entered they spotted a man with his back to them, looking down at something on a partially intact desk.

"Uh... Are you the leader?" Krillin asked after they'd stood and stared at his back for several seconds.

The man turned and attempted a smile, though the effect was lost with his only partially intact jaw and an empty eye socket.

To most anyone in the world he would have been a hideous sight. A gruesome slash across his face that had probably been the cause of the empty eye socket that marked where his left eye had once been, a destroyed jaw that left his words slurred and difficult to understand, a hand that had been mangled beyond recognition and a stump were his right leg had been severed just above the knee. An ear had been removed and there were hundreds of scars covering his face, head, arms, chest, and what was left of his legs. On top of that, his glorious afro was gone leaving only a few curly grey hairs sticking out of the sides of his head.

But to one person in that room he could never be hideous; no matter what torture was inflicted upon him.

"Grandpa!" Pan yelled as she rushed across the room and drew her arms around him, her tears falling on his pale, bald head.

"P'n?" he asked in a voice muffled both by emotion and his injury. "Is et eally ou?" His one good hand reached up and gently touched her face as tears streamed from his eye.

Pan stepped back and looked down on him, her eyes wanting to turn away from the grisly sight, but her mind firmly refusing to let him see her looking at him with anything but love. Somehow, in the instant he had turned and smiled at them she had seen that he was both looking toward this moment and fearing it. He would have wanted to see her, of course, but knowing him he would have feared that she'd see his deformity and not see him.

She would not allow him to think that she would be repulsed by his appearance.

"Of course it's me," she smiled.

"H...ow?" his annoying mouth usually refused to cooperate and form the words properly, but he managed to get his question out with only a small amount of effort.

"We... we're from the past," she explained. "Kanata... I mean, Akira brought us with him from our timeline so we could help fight the Arlean here."

Hercule's eye shifted from her to the others standing behind her. Sharpner had told him that the people his daughter had hung out with were all here. Everyone from the 'little troll guy' to his son-in-law Gohan and his granddaughter Pan, but when he'd heard that there were two who looked just like the monsters that had done this to him when he'd been 'broken' and that they were apparently traveling with his daughter's friends and family he'd almost said to keep them away.

A part of him knew – or at least had hoped – that Akira wasn't really helping the alien that had taken over the planet. Numerous 'Akiras' had helped conquer Earth (and Hercule was pretty sure that there was only supposed to be one), but that didn't change the automatic reaction he had when he looked at the images of the killers who had taken millions of lives and enslaved the planet.

Now that he was looking into that face for the first time since he'd been beaten to a bloody, almost-unrecognizable pulp he wished that he'd made them stay away. Hatred coursed through his veins and for a moment he almost considered taking a swing at the closer of the two, though he knew it would be pointless even if he still had his once relatively formidable strength.

He took a deep breath and whispered, "T'ey aren' ike the 'nes ew did t'is to meh, are t'ey?"

"No," Pan replied, "Kanata—" she pointed to the one she was talking about "—came from this timeline and saved everyone in ours, he made it so none of what's happened here will happen to in my timeline."

Hercule had been informed that these people were claiming to be from another timeline and hearing it from his granddaughter's mouth made it the gospel truth. Once, long ago, he would have thought it was a stupid lie or a trick of some sorts, but seemingly from the day his daughter became friends with – or at least became aware of the existence of – Gohan, the impossible had become rather common place. Time travel, diverging timelines, pink blobs who can turn people into candy, warriors who could fly and shake off direct hits from nuclear weapons… it all fell into the category of weird things that only happen to Gohan's crowd.

"'ou 'eft us!" He growled at Kanata. "'ee neebed 'ou an 'ou 'et us die!"

The last of the saiyan's from that timeline finally blinked and looked down at the broken man whose family he had been close to becoming a member of, the man who was the last bit of his Pan left in the living world. Anyone paying close enough attention probably would have seen Kanata's body give a small shake and his Adam's apple dip as he swallowed.

He took a deep breath and looked for a moment like he wanted to say something, but for whatever reason he let his gaze fall to the floor and remained silent.

Hercule continued to glare at him, but before he could say anything else Pan spoke up. "Grandpa, what happened to you... what happened to the Earth?"

She knew the gist of the answer, they'd heard some of the story from Sharpner while he led them here, but he wouldn't know as much as Hercule would – after all, Hercule was still the "Champ" in most people's eyes, he would probably have been called upon immediately to help fight off the invaders.

Kanata listened to Hercule's halting and at times unintelligible retelling of the story they'd already basically heard from Sharpner with a growing sense of…

He wasn't even sure what it was that he felt. His stomach seemed to have fallen into his shoes and his whole body felt cold even though it was plenty warm in the room. Every word that spilled from Hercule's mangled lips was like a sword stabbing into his chest.

'_It's not my fault,'_ he told himself, _'It wasn't my job to protect them… it's not my fault.'_

As the story finally came to a close and Pan began comforting Hercule while the others nodded every time she promised they were going to fix things in this timeline, Kanata slipped away. He wasn't part of this, he couldn't be there offering to help these sad wretches who'd been living in hell for the better part of a decade.

Their problems weren't his fault… and he doubted he'd be around later to help them.

ooo

Dasala reclined on his beautiful couch, eying the food that one of his human servants had just delivered for him. Outside he could see a dozen of his children playing in a large grassy field while some of the clones watched over them as they had been ordered.

Life was truly good.

The humans and their planet were his now, his children were growing larger everyday – in only a few more years they too would be ready to reproduce with some of the insectoid species he'd kept stored for them, his small army of clones were completely and totally under his control. Everything was perfect. Even the lone saiyan that had escaped him had not been seen or heard from in over a decade. If he was still alive, it did not seem that he would be coming back.

'_Hmm,'_ he chuckled to himself, _'a smart saiyan. Who would have guessed that such a thing existed?'_

He selected a cluster of grapes from the tray on the table and ate them one by one, enjoying the wonderful turn his life had taken. Fate, it seemed, had been willing to admit that it made a mistake in giving him such a cruel life and was now paying him back in full.

A soft knock on the door awoke him from his musings.

"Yes?" he demanded.

A clone stepped through the door and knelt, "You instructed me to inform you if there was ever anything unusual on the scanners."

The voice from the clone was completely devoid of life and emotion, as almost all of them were. After all the years of being completely under the control of the enslaving device implanted in their brains left them with little to no personality and absolutely no free will. They were simply machines now, nothing more. Only a few managed to retain some sort of life within themselves, the most powerful ones, of course, but even they were slowly turning into automatons.

Dasala might have felt sorry for them if they were created in the image of a race of murderers. As it was, it was fitting that the only thing left of the saiyans were these pathetic creatures who obeyed his every command. Perhaps one day, after he'd ensured his race's survival, he'd simply destroy the device that kept them under his control and watch what happened when they no longer had anyone instructing them to continue living. Or maybe he'd order them all to stop eating and drinking and watch as they wasted away to nothing, until their organs began to fail and violent seizures racked their bodies as they died.

"What did you detect?"

"A large object entered the atmosphere and landed in one of the destroyed cities," the monotone voice replied.

"A meteor?"

"No, master, it was a ship or some sort."

Dasala's eyes widened. There were only two possible explanations: either some alien species had discovered this planet and were investigating it (which he doubted), or else the last of the saiyans had returned to settle things.

"Which city?"

"It was called West Capital."

The former home of that blasted saiyan. So he was back. Dasala grabbed his slave controller and pressed several buttons on it and then held it up to his mouth and said, "You three go to West Capital and kill every living thing there."

He didn't get any sort of confirmation, but he didn't need it. The saiyan clones were completely under his control; no doubt they had already leapt into the air and started towards the ruins of the once great city.

ooo

There was a small audience waiting outside the room as Kanata escaped, the people had apparently gathered to see who it was that their leader was speaking with and wanting to see if it was true that two of the newcomers were like the monsters.

Kanata's sudden appearance sent nearly everyone scurrying away. A few remained, however, glaring at him with hatred, trying to prove to themselves and their fellow survivors that there were those who did not fear the monsters.

It only took a few seconds before the first of the rocks hit the side of Kanata's head. He turned, not in pain, but in surprise as more small stones and pieces of trash rained down on him. He watched them calmly for a moment and then reached up and snatched a large stone out of the air as it flew at his face.

He turned it into dust with the greatest of ease, his eyes burrowing into those of his attackers. The group of humans fled, their momentary courage evaporating under his gaze and the realization that their attackers were nothing to him.

He didn't even bother watching them run; he just wandered towards a darkened corner of the room and sat down, staring with unblinking eyes at the ground, his mind seemingly a million miles away.

Everything that these people had suffered… it couldn't have been his fault, could it? Was their hatred was well placed, more so than they even knew? If he'd stayed on Earth, if he hadn't let his grief consume him, would any of this have happened? Had he failed again, just like he'd failed Pan?

He'd known, of course, what would the planet fate of the planet probably would be with no one there to protect it, or at least he'd suspected. He just hadn't cared. He'd wanted Pan back so badly that he'd abandoned the helpless so he could try to revive her. He'd allowed the Arlean to live because he'd wanted to get her back first; he'd needed to get her back first. He'd left his enemy on this planet and the bug had thrived for a decade while Kanata went around hurting innocent people all so he could have a chance to bring Pan back… and it hadn't even worked. He'd killed millions for nothing, even the deaths that had happened on this planet could be seen as being his fault…

But they couldn't be his fault; he'd never asked to be their protector…

Internally he scowled at himself. These weak thoughts had no place in his mind, but he couldn't get them to leave. He was supposed to be a saiyan of old, wasn't he? He was supposed to live for battle, to kill without mercy, to feel nothing for the weak.

So why could he feel emotions he wasn't supposed to feel trying to rise to the surface?

"You're not as scary as you think you are," a soft voice whispered to him, breaking him out of his thoughts.

He looked up into the chocolate eyes of the child that had attacked him earlier; a dark purple bruise had formed along the side of the little human's face.

"Go away," he growled.

Instead of obeying, the child actually sat down next to him.

Kanata glared, but the object of his ire didn't seem to pick up on the violent thoughts being aimed at him or her (it was difficult to tell which in the dim lighting).

"You look like the monsters," the child pointed out, "but you aren't one of them. If you were, you would have killed those people who threw rocks at you."

"Are you looking to get hit again or something?" His knuckles popped threateningly as his hand squeezed into a fist.

The child grinned impishly, ignoring the threat, and then sobered as he asked, "Why are you so sad?"

"Because a little boy doesn't know how to shut up and leave me alone."

"I'm not a boy!" the not-a-boy yelled. "I'm a girl!"

Kanata frowned and gave the girl a long look before saying, "You look like a boy."

She scowled fiercely at him, but did not leave as he'd hoped she would. "You look like a monster."

"I _am_ a monster," he replied.

She didn't seem to have a response for that and so the two sat in silence, Kanata staring at the ground and the girl staring at Kanata.

Finally she said, "My name's Adira... but I don't like that name. I want everyone to just call me Adi."

"Why?" He hadn't meant to ask the question, he didn't really care what her name was, but for some reason it had just popped out.

"My mom said 'Adira' means 'strong,' but I'm not strong. I hid when the bad people came and took her and my brother," there were tears in her eyes and her voice was full of sorrow. "I was too scared... I wasn't strong like I should have been."

Kanata regarded her for a moment in silence and then said, "Even strong people get scared... you shouldn't be ashamed of hiding. It wasn't your fault your family was taken away. Someone should have been there to protect you… but he wasn't."

Adira looked him her round eyes filled with confusion, "Who?"

"It doesn't matter. That person's dead now."

"Was he brave? Was he a hero like Mr. Satan?"

Kanata's eyes fell to the floor once again, "No, he wasn't half the hero Mr. Satan is."

"How did he die?"

"He was a weak coward… maybe he just got what he deserved." Kanata stood and walked away.

The little girl watched him go with a thoughtful expression on her face. Kanata didn't know if she understood what he'd told her and he didn't care, he was just glad she wasn't following him and reminding him of yet another life that had been destroyed.

Not that it was his fault…

It wasn't.

o

o

A/N: Okay, I promise that there will be fighting in the next chapter. I'd hoped that it would be here by now, but for some reason none of my characters are willing to cooperate and move any faster than what you see right here. Still, bad guys are coming and will arrive shortly, that's got to be a good thing… right? Anyway, sorry this took so long to get out and that it was another chapter of getting everyone in the right place, but now that they are all basically there, things should get good, I hope. Thanks for all the reviews… I can't believe this story has gotten 810 reviews, it just blows my mind!


	74. The Last Protector of Earth

**Chapter 74: The Last Protector of Earth**

o

Kanata wasn't sure where he was going, but he wasn't going to stay in the shelter any more. He didn't want to see the accusing eyes of the destitute, he didn't want to see the ruined form of Hercule, and he didn't want an annoying little girl chasing after him asking why he wasn't there to keep her mom and brother safe.

It wasn't like he _had_ to keep the people of Earth safe, was it? No one had ever offered him the job, they weren't paying him to protect them and he'd certainly never asked for the responsibility. What happened to them was unfortunate, but he'd suffered too, just as much as – if not more than – any of them... he had nothing to feel guilty about!

But for some reason, the oppressive weight that had been bearing down on him from the moment he started his journey back to this kami-forsaken timeline was only growing heavier and it didn't seem to care that none of this was really his fault or that he hadn't asked to be one of the Earth's protectors.

His dark eyes locked onto the stairwell that led back up to the surface and he practically ran to it, desperate to escape the emotions that swirled around him whenever he caught sight of another of the malnourished, ghostly-pale humans who haunted the underground shelter… of another person whose hardships were not his fault.

None of it was his fault…

ooo

Bra sat quietly in her room, staring at the wall and wishing for something to happen so she wouldn't be alone with her thoughts. Everything had been fine while she was helping corral little Kumo and get him to lay down for his nap…

A sudden, loud thumping sound from the next room informed her that getting the youngest demi-saiyan to lay down for his nap and getting him to actually take it were two very different things.

…but now that all of the distractions were more or less gone she was stuck with nothing to do but think. And think she did.

In the other timeline, Uubu, her father, and her two brothers could be fighting for their lives right now… er, _right then,_ in the future or wherever they were.

If things went badly – and Kanata hadn't exactly made it sound like there was any other way it _could_ go – then she potentially could lose every single man that meant anything to her in one blow. Her father, two brothers, and the man that she could very well be in love with were all in grave, unknown danger and if they died, she'd never even hear about it. They just wouldn't come back.

She knew if that happened – if they never returned – she, her mother, and all the others who'd had to stay behind would never get over it. They'd simply hold out hope for years and years – long after it became obvious that the Z Fighters wouldn't ever come back – because after everything they'd seen and done, they all knew that the powerful protectors of Earth made habits out of pulling out miraculous endings.

And this time, Bra thought, it probably would take something along the lines of a miracle for the men in her life to return.

"Bra?" Bulma's voice called from the door a moment before it opened, "Are you okay?"

Bra was silent for a moment and then said, "Of course, why wouldn't I be?"

Bulma smiled kindly and sat down next to her daughter. "You want to talk about it?"

"It's nothing…" the young woman said with a sigh, "I just… I just wish they'd stay put, you know? I mean, I understand why they went, but…" she couldn't bring herself to say what she'd been thinking earlier. It was against the rules after all. No one said that the Z Fighters wouldn't come back because… well, they just didn't.

"But if they die then we'll never see them again and we'll never know what happened to them?" Bulma filled in for her.

Bra stared at her mother in horror, the words sounded even worse when they actually hit the air and weren't just relegated to whispers in her mind. "Yeah," she admitted after a few minutes of silence. "I just want them to stay here. When they get back… I don't want to have to go through this anymore, I don't want to have dad and Trunks and Akira and… and Uubu running around fighting hordes of enemies while I have to wait and see if they're going to die this time or not."

Bulma's smile faltered, "Then you better dump Uubu and get yourself emancipated or find a new family to adopt you because what you just said… it won't happen."

Again Bra was left staring.

"You were born into a family of heroes," Bulma said quietly, "your boyfriend is a hero, and a lot of our family friends are heroes, protecting people is what they do and usually our little group gets to handle the biggest and baddest of the bad guys." The smile returned as she said, "They will probably always be running off on some damned adventure with the fate of the world riding on the outcome, because that's what heroes do."

There was a moment of silence and then Bulma shifted gears and got Bra's mind away from the troubles of the present and onto the troubles of the future.

"I bet when you marry Uubu, your sons or daughters will be going on adventures too."

"I… bu… That's not… I mean…" Bra struggled to figure out which of the myriad of emotions now cursing through her she should express first. Finally she settled on old faithful: anger. "What do you mean WHEN? I'm barely even dating Uubu; in fact, I haven't even gone on a date with him! Why are you talking marriage?"

She scowled, "Besides, _IF_ I were to marry Uubu, we'd have all girls and he'll only be allowed to teach them basic self defense and how to fly. Then they'll spend all their time going to the mall, buying cute outfits, and looking fabulous."

Bulma was ready to roll on the ground laughing, but before she went there she figured she'd need to take one last shot at her daughter. "I don't know, with your luck you'll probably have all boys and one girl who acts like Pan."

Bra's mouth fell open in horror at the thought and Bulma had herself a good laugh on the floor, thankful for daughters who were easy to tease and good for distracting one from their own fears about loved ones in danger.

ooo

The fading sunlight that reflected off of the pollutants that hung in the air over the ruins of West Capital seemed to ignite the sky above the city, treating those few who remained alive to see it to an awe inspiring sunset. The few sentries posted in decaying buildings around the entrance to the shelter took a moment to admire one of the few beautiful things still left in their lives.

Perhaps it was because of this momentary distraction that they did not notice the shadow that slipped from the former government lab building and vanished into the bowels of the city, or perhaps it was simply because the shadow moved faster than a regular human's eye could hope to follow.

The distraction of the sunset did not, however, keep one of them from noticing the three dark shapes that appeared in the sky, but his human physical limitations once again worked against him. His eyes, still trying to fight off the aftereffects of staring at the setting sun and tired from standing outside all day watching the dead city, could not discern whether he was seeing more of the birds that seemed to continuously circle the city in search of more dead bodies to pick clean or if he was looking at something more. In an effort to figure out what he was seeing so he could report it if it was needed, the man leaned out the window just a little, but it was enough for the keen-eyed harbingers of death to zero in on him.

In an instant, one of the shapes had vanished and he knew what he was seeing now. The man reached down for his radio, but before his hand was half way there he felt a strange cold feeling run down his arm. He glanced down and found that where a hand had once been, all he was now left with was a bloody stump.

_'How odd,'_ the man thought as blood sprayed from his arm, bathing the dirty floor and walls a bright crimson color, for some reason he'd always thought it would hurt more to die. And dying, he knew, was exactly what was going to happen.

Even as that thought passed through his mind his eyes bulged out as a powerful hand dug into his back and wrapped itself around his spinal column. This time he felt the pain, an incredible amount of pain actually, but again, he'd always thought it would hurt more.

_'How odd that you can be almost disappointed by something that you've been thinking about and expecting for so many years, even something like your own death.'_

A wet popping sound reached his ears as his spinal cord was torn from his back and then he was suddenly looking at a long line of tiny white clouds which were slowly working their way into a large, green-roofed building in the distance.

_'How odd,' _he thought as he floated over to the line and patiently waited his turn.

ooo

Not many people would have heard it, but Kanata was not many people. In the stillness of the empty city a person with ki enhanced abilities could just about hear a whisper from a thousand yards away, the sound of a body falling out of a building and plummeting eight stories to the ground might as well have been a foghorn.

He was heading back to the shelter in a heartbeat.

It wouldn't have taken a genius of Bulma's caliber to figure out what had happened to the sentry, but with the murderer floating over the body looking around for more victims, Kanata was sure even Goku could have figured it out.

The clone's face was strangely devoid of emotion as it looked down on the body of the human who's bloody spinal cord it still held in its hand. Even as its eyes came up and zeroed in on Kanata as the saiyan charged forward, it never showed a flicker of surprise or a hint of either fear or excitement. It simply stared at him as his fist slammed into its face sending it rocketing just above the crumbling street and into a large pile that had once been a tall office building. The pile exploded as the clone crashed into it, showering the area in debris that somehow didn't make much difference to the overall appearance of this part of the city.

Kanata glanced down at the body and instantly squeezed his eyes shut against the image. His breaths began coming out in quick, shallow gasps as emotions he kept promising himself didn't exist tried to break free of the chains he'd placed on them a decade ago.

How many people had he left looking exactly like this while he was working for Heata? How many children like Adira had hid under their beds while he killed their mothers and brothers? How many warriors had he tortured the way Hercule had been tortured?

He was everything that he hated. He was no different than these clones or the Arlean. He had the blood of millions on his head; he'd thrown away everything for revenge and had lost himself in it. He'd drank himself into oblivion and screwed whichever whore caught his attention in an effort to drown out the pain, but while he'd been doing that he was letting millions of people on Earth go through everything he'd been forced to endure, only they didn't have the power to do anything about it.

In that moment he made his decision. He'd come back to this timeline to kill the Arlean, but until that second it had been all about revenge – in theory all about Pan, but in reality all about himself – but suddenly he didn't care about that anymore, his revenge meant nothing in the long run because the Arlean had already won. He'd killed all of the saiyans and their friends; he'd even killed Akira leaving the pathetic creature Kanata in his place. He'd conquered Earth and held it for ten years all because Akira had bowed out of the fight before it even really begun.

Well, no more. With every last breath in his body Kanata would fight to make sure that the people of this planet could live in peace. Hercule's injuries might not be treatable, but no one would ever go through that again and the Champ, one of Earth's greatest heroes would not die in a hole in the ground, he would live his life on the surface where all could see what he'd endured for them and praise his heroism. Adira's family might be lost forever, but when she grew up and had her own children she would never have to fear for their safety.

In the distance the clone rose out of the rubble, two more clones coming and dropping down next to it, all staring at Kanata with the same blank expressions.

The saiyan trembled as his hands balled into fists and the veins in his arms bulged as power surged through them. "I never should have left," he whispered. "I should have finished this in the beginning, before you bastards could hurt anyone else. I can't undo what I've done..." his voice rose to a roar,"...but I swear I won't let a single one of you ever hurt another person ever again!"

The clones had no response, they simply charged forward, single-mindedly bent on killing all living things found in this city, just as they'd been commanded.

ooo

"It's started," was all King Kai had to say and instantly he was swarmed by the group of humans (and android), saiyans and one namek who had all been waiting with barely-there patience to get some sort of news about their friend.

Before he was swamped with the questions he knew were coming he indicated his back and said, "I'll show you what's happening, but try not to press too hard, alright? I'm not as young as I used to be."

And so the group all touched him and watched with bated breath as the last battle for control of the planet Earth began to unfold.

ooo

Kanata shifted slightly as the three clones rushed at him, his muscles taunt as he waited for them. The instant they were with in range he sprang into action, his hand jumped forward as a small ki blast shot from his palm, missing all three enemies, but forcing them to slow down for a fraction of a second as they dodged out of the way. The momentary distraction was all he needed.

His feet kicked off the ground and he was amongst them before his ki blast had even completely passed by. He body was a blur of motion as he dodged and blocked kicks and punches flying at him from all directions all the while dishing out punishment whenever a minute hole in one of the clones' defenses appeared.

They were slower than him. Surprisingly slow in fact. Their punches had all the speed of a turtle pushing its way through a tar pit, it was pitiful.

For a moment it was even confusing. Where these things toying with him? In the brief instant that his fist had connected with the first clone he'd felt what he thought was the things suppressed power level, but unless all three were just playing games, it might actually have been the clone's true power he'd felt.

In the end though, it didn't matter. These things could only have come to this specific city and this particular part of the city so quickly after his arrival for one reason: his ship had been detected landing here. Kanata could think of no other reason to send the clones. Once again his actions had endangered the people of Earth, only this time he wasn't running away; this time he was going to make sure that every single person in that shelter lived to see another beautiful sunset like the one that was still bathing the city in a soft red light, even if it cost him his life. Killing the Alrean would be a necessity for freedom and peace to return to the planet, but it wasn't really the priority anymore. Now it was just the means to an end.

A fist actually came close to striking him and he instantly pushed all distractions from his mind and focused on the task at hand.

He caught a kick that was aimed for his chest and twisted hard; there was a loud popping sound as the ligaments in the clone's knee were shredded. Kanata ducked under two punches at his head from the other two clones and then fired ki blasts into their chests, knocking them away so he could focus on the clone he'd already injured.

The remaining clone was hovering now, still attacking with both feet and hands, completely ignoring the fact that its right leg was twisted around backwards from the knee down and flapping back and forth every time it was swung. It just kept attacking; apparently not even feeling the pain.

Kanata ducked under the barely attached limb, pivoted, and slammed his elbow into the clone's face, sending it tumbling end over end into a crumbling skyscraper that ended up being unable to handle the sudden impact. It collapsed down upon the clone almost immediately and filled the area with a large cloud of dust.

It was in that instant that Kanata realized what he was dealing with. These clones had been controlled for so long they were little more than living robots, they had no will of their own, no higher brain functions. They were told to attack and so they did and they would keep attacking until either they were dead or they'd reached the goal that had been set for them.

What they were experiencing could barely be called life. Their brains were already gone, now it was just a matter of getting their bodies to catch on to that fact.

Well, Kanata had no problem cluing them in.

ooo

"Hercule, no matter what, we're going to fight the Arleant," Gohan said as Pan finally let go of the fierce hug she'd had her grandfather (at least the current timeline's version of him) wrapped up in since he'd finished telling them what had happened to the Earth in general and himself specifically since the fall of the Z Fighters, "but if you or any of your people know anything about him or the area that he stays in, it would help us a lot."

Hercule nodded, "Ah 'ight, we'be 'ot so-u-me 'eople da've been t'ere." He gingerly rubbed the remains of his jaw; it had been a long time since he'd talked as much as he had since his granddaughter walked through the door to his room.

The Z Fighters would have laughed at the idea of Hercule's jaw muscles being out of shape, but the reason for the atrophy was no laughing matter and even Vegeta wasn't callous enough to mention it.

"If you could just point us in the right direction," Goten offered, "We could go talk to them oursel—"

He was interrupted by a slight shaking of the ceiling which brought a small shower of dust down upon the group.

"Eh, I don't remember West Capital getting many earthquakes," Krillin said with a confused look on his face.

"That's 'cause it doesn't _get_ any earthquakes," Yamcha replied.

The group turned towards the door as one and then stopped short. Someone was missing.

"Um, where's Kanata?" Trunks asked.

The ceiling rumbled again and the Z Fighters were out the door and heading for the entrance to the shelter.

ooo

Kanata was heading towards the collapsed building, ready to finish off the already injured clone when he noticed a tiny hint of movement out of the corner of his eye and quickly jerked his head back as a fist slipped past it. One of the other clones had recovered and powered up a little bit, though he had surprisingly not transformed for some reason. The saiyan drove his elbow into the unprotected stomach of the over-extended clone and was about to finish his duplicate off when another clone dropped down on him from above, driving him into the ground.

Kanata cursed his lack of awareness as he shot out of the asphalt and into the air, these things were weak, but they weren't _that _weak.

The two clones slowly circled around him searching for the right moment to attack while staring at him with unblinking, empty eyes. Kanata was about to force the issue and attack when his senses flared and he was forced to dodge a moderately powerful ki blast that shot out of the remains of the building he'd sent the injured clone into.

The other two wasted no time in using the saiyan warrior's momentary distraction to press the issue as both charged at him from opposite sides, one landed a solid kick to his back while the other's fist slammed into Kanata's face, flipping him in the air.

"Okay," Kanata growled as he righted himself and spit blood from his mouth, "now I'm playing for real." Golden light enveloped him as he powered up to Super Saiyan.

The clones predictably showed neither surprise nor concern at the new development as they also powered up to Super Saiyan.

Slowly the four identical warriors circled each other and then, with a growl from Kanata and complete silence from the other three, they shot forward and met with a flurry of punches and kicks that were so powerful the surrounding buildings began to quake.

For several minutes the four super powers went toe to toe, neither side giving any ground to the other, and then slowly but steadily the tide began to turn in Kanata's favor. The clones' punches seemed to be just a little slower, a little less effective and his own were driving them back. As soon as whatever part of their brains controlled their fighting instincts realized that they were about to be overwhelmed even though they owned a three to one advantage, the clones broke away from the fighting, hovering a fairly safe distance from him and apparently trying to rethink their strategy in so much as they were capable.

Kanata waited patiently for them. If there were already three clones here, there could easily be more and even if there weren't anymore here there would most certainly be more wherever it was that the Arlean was at. He had to conserve his energy if for no other reason than because he knew that there were probably at least two clones out there who were capable of Super Saiyan three and four, if he wanted to beat them he'd need to be able to go higher and that would take every once of his power.

As he watched them, one of the clones turned its head and looked down at something near the building under which the shelter lay. A few seconds later the other two turned and looked as well.

Kanata stared at them in confusion, his own eyes scanning the area, trying to figure out what they'd seen that had captured their attention so completely. The Z Fighters from the other timeline were down there, of course, but their power levels were being tightly controlled, they couldn't possibly be what the clones had noticed and it didn't seem likely that the humans huddled underground could be giving off enough ki even collectively to be picked up either.

And then his keen saiyan eyes caught it; a tiny shift next to the remains of a collapsed wall of the former government laboratory. In the fading light it was almost impossible to see, but something had definitely moved; something that looked suspiciously like a small, dark hair-covered head.

The three clones simultaneously brought their hands back and then threw them forward as enormous ki blasts erupted from their cupped palms.

In an instant, three things ran through Kanata's mind so fast that they couldn't even be called conscious thoughts, he just knew them. The first was that there was a human – most likely one that had followed him after he'd abruptly walked away from their conversation in a darkened corner of the shelter – down there that was about to be vaporized. The second was that he wasn't powered up enough to knock those attacks away and wouldn't be able to power up enough before the attacks hit their target. And the third was that only a few hours ago he would have shrugged his shoulders and used the momentary distraction of the clones as his chance to take them out with minimal effort... but he couldn't do that anymore for some reason.

He was almost too far away from the clones' intended victim to reach her before the three ki blasts did. Almost, but not quite.

"Hold on!" he yelled as his powerful arms curled around Adira and his ki flared brightly, protecting the little girl from the explosion that leveled the building and sent an enormous mushroom cloud billowing into the sky.

ooo

Pan had just stepped onto the stairwell when a landslide of concrete, dirt, and steel rumbled down the steps towards her. She instinctively hopped back and out of the small tunnel as a large cloud exploded out of the small doorway that marked the only exit.

For a few minutes the entire room seemed to be filled with the thick grey cloud of dust and then slowly the sediment settled and the blocked passageway could be seen.

"We're trapped!" someone yelled as the shelters population slowly crowded around the scene and then pandemonium broke out.

"The monsters are attacking!"

"We're going to die!"

"The strangers brought them here!"

"It's all their fault!"

"They're working for the Master!"

"SILENCE!" Vegeta roared, his aura swirling around him and his eyes threatening death to the next person who spoke.

Had they not all been eaten already, the footfalls of any rats in the area would have sounded like thunder in the silence that followed the Saiyan Prince's outburst.

"Finally," Vegeta almost chuckled, "a group of people that know they're supposed to respect and fear me."

Trunks rolled his eyes and shook his head as he walked to the doorway and raised his hand to blow the debris away.

"Stop," Gohan said, grabbing the younger saiyan's arm. "This ceiling isn't very stable as it is. If you do that, you might bring the whole thing down and you'll kill everyone in here."

"What do we do then?" Goten asked as he came over and examined the clogged exit.

"Don't say you want us to dig our way out," Eighteen sighed, knowing that was exactly what Gohan was going to say.

"It's the only way to make sure we don't cause a cave in."

"What is it with you and doing things the hard way?" the blonde android demanded with a scowl. "First you wanted to walk around that godforsaken mountain instead of just punching holes until we found what we were looking for and now you want to dig out of this instead of just blowing it away?"

Before Gohan could reply, there was another tremble above them and a new shower of dust from the ceiling.

Eighteen glanced at Akira who'd been fairly quiet during the last few minutes. "Can't you just teleport us out or something?"

Akira's face scrunched up as he concentrated, searching for something – anything – to lock onto, but there was nothing. As far as he could tell, no one with a power level worth mentioning was anywhere on the planet. "If Kanata's up there fighting something, I can't feel him or whatever he's fighting."

"Great," the android grumbled as she walked over to the blocked exit and began pulling rocks and steel beams out of it. After a moment, her once beautiful skirt and blouse were covered in dirt. "From now on I'm just staying home," she promised herself as she threw a multi-ton slab of concrete over her shoulder to where Vegeta was standing.

The Saiyan Prince caught the slab and tossed it aside as though it weighed nothing. The going was slower than blasting their way through, but the Z Fighters knew that it would only take them a couple of minutes to clear the passageway anyway.

ooo

Before the smoke had even begun to dissipate from around the crater that had once been the building above the shelter, Kanata had shot out of it, cradling a wide-eyed little girl in his arms.

"Don't worry, I've got you, we're okay," he told her soothingly. The comforting words would probably have been more effective if he hadn't had to spin to the side to dodge a powerful kick that would have crushed the girl's head against Kanata's chest. "Um, alright," he amended, "we _will_ be okay."

The clone that had kicked them, turned on a dime and rammed into Kanata's back as he continued to try to fly away from the fight.

The saiyan tumbled for a second before righting himself, but the momentary slow down cost him and the three clones descended upon Kanata and his passenger. Fists and feet lashed out at him and he had no choice but to curl up in the air in order to keep the little girl unharmed.

For a moment it seemed that the momentum had shifted decisively in the golden haired clones' favor and then the saiyan did something completely unexpected. His feet lashed out and kicked the clone directly in front of him and then he threw Adira… straight up.

The little dark skinned girl shot away from the battle like a small missile, drawing the clones' attention as she headed higher and higher into the sky. One clone brought its eyes back down and found that the saiyan was no longer in front of it. Just as the clone started to look around for the missing Super Saiyan, a vice-like grip closed around its throat.

"I hope your master can hear this," Kanata's voice whispered in the clone's ear, "because I'm coming for him. I'm going to end his tyranny over this planet, even if it costs me my life."

The last thing the clone heard was the crunching of his own spine as his neck was crushed by the last of the Z Fighters.

The two clones charged forward, their faces still emotionless masks despite the death of their brother. Kanata threw the body of the third clone into the face of his closest opponent and then ducked under a kick by the remaining clone. Ki burned in the palm of his hand for a moment and then shot up into the face of the kicking clone.

Had he had a little longer, he probably could have taken out his second clone with that ki blast, but before he could pump enough power into his attack he had to dodge a knee that was aiming for the back of his head.

The saiyan chanced a quick glance upwards and noted that the small speck in the sky that was a little girl looked like it had reached the apex of its flight and would soon be plummeting back to Earth.

He dropped down to the ground to buy himself an extra second or two, his clones right on his heals – the girl completely forgotten in their simple minds. The two landed on either side of him and attacked instantly.

Kanata's right foot and left hand flew into action, his foot stopping a kick and his hand catching an elbow that was coming down on his head courtesy of the clone whose leg he'd nearly taken completely off earlier in the fight. He spun in a tight circle, his left hand slamming into one clone's nose and then he ducked and his foot swept the second clone's feet out from under him. As he came back around his hands cupped at his hip and glowing red and gold energy pulsating in his palms.

"Sei Kaze!"

The clone that had stumbled back after being caught in the nose by Kanata's punch started to bring its arms up, but it was all for not. The ki blast struck it in the chest and then exploded out its back.

Kanata spun again just in time to catch the remaining clone's foot an inch before it would have connected with his face. The doppelganger's knee wobbled unsettlingly even after its foot was trapped. The saiyan smiled and drove his fist up and through the injured joint, showering himself in blood and getting almost no reaction from the clone.

The clone was, however, thrown off balance by the sudden loss of the limb it had been putting a lot of pressure on and it tumbled forward. Kanata's hand came up and caught his double by the face.

"Goodbye," he said calmly as ki rippled across his hand and then shot out the back of the clone's head.

Kanata tossed the body aside in disgust and then, with what appeared to be preplanned ease, but was actually more like preplanned luck, held out his arms and caught Adira, buffeting her with his ki to slow her decent at the last second.

Her eyes were still incredibly wide and her breathes were coming out in short little gasps as her brain tried to catch up to the fact that she had not just slammed into the hard concrete of the city floor and was in fact still very much alive.

Kanata couldn't help but flash a cocky grin, something that would have been on his lips instantly after pulling off what he'd just done before the Arlean had killed all of his friends and family. "See, I told you we'd be okay."

He gently set her down, smiling reassured at her. Adira's enormous eyes went from the saiyan's face to the ground back to the saiyan and then back to the ground quickly as her one meager meal that day decided that it wasn't going to stick with her anymore.

ooo

Gohan's assessment of the stability of the ceiling proved to be far more accurate than Eighteen would willingly give him credit for. While clearing the tunnel to the city above, the Z Fighters had been forced to brace the area around the stairwell several times to keep the entire thing from falling down on them. Fortunately they had plenty of materials to use thanks to the large piles of debris that had been pulled from the tunnel. A little straightening, some welding with extremely low power ki beams and even the most worthless pile of steel beams and concrete slabs were turned into more than adequate struts.

The humans who lived in the cavernous underground room would probably reassess their desire to live there, but they weren't in any danger of having the ceiling collapse down on them in the near future.

Once the tunnel was finally cleared out, the Z Fighters hurried out and found themselves standing at the bottom of a decent sized crater. They quickly flew out of it and looked around in confusion, with the exception of the crater, the city looked about the same as it had before… not that that was saying much, but there were no real immediate signs of a fight.

"You four go that way," Vegeta ordered, pointing at Gohan, Eighteen, Pan and Tien, "the rest of us will check this way. Don't use any power that might be detected unless you absolutely have to." He glanced at Krillin and said, "If I feel so much as a hint of power out of you, cue ball, you better be fighting for your life."

Krillin didn't bother to point out that he hadn't been a "cue ball" in nearly twenty years (and, thanks to some damn good genes, probably wouldn't ever be one again), he simply nodded and headed of in the direction Vegeta had assigned for him, wondering if he'd have had to put up with that if Goku was still around to give orders. The others likewise headed in their designated directions, splitting up farther as the fanned out from the crater in search of some sign of either Kanata or the clones.

Only a few seconds into the search, Tien came across the body of the lookout, slightly crushed under some rubble that had fallen from a building which had miraculously remained standing, though it looked like a stiff breeze would knock it down now.

A moment later and Akira came across a dead version of himself. He was about to go looking for Vegeta when Trunks' voice called out.

"Over here!"

The group reassembled quickly around the remains of one clone whose head was much more empty than it ought to have been and a little girl who was standing a short distance away.

"Hey!" Pan exclaimed as she caught sight of the girl. "You're that kid Kanata hit!"

"I'm Adi," the little girl said looking around at the large group of adults clustered around her, her eyes momentarily widening when they hit Akira.

"What happened?" Vegeta demanded in his usual gruff voice.

Gohan glared at him and then said in a calm, reassuring voice, "Adi, we're looking for a friend of ours. He looks just like Akira here," he indicated the youngest saiyan, "have you seen him?"

The little girl nodded, a wide grin crossing her face. "He's going to beat the bad guys," she whispered in a voice approaching reverence. "He's the hero that's going to save us, like Mr. Satan did against the Cell monster!"

ooo

Dasala was not happy. Not at all.

The day that had started off so nicely, just as all the others had for the last ten years, was suddenly becoming unpleasant or at least a little unsettling.

The three clones he'd sent to West Capital were dead and he didn't even know why. He'd assumed that the three of them could handle anything they came across, but something had wiped them out and whatever it was had done it quickly too.

This could only mean that the last saiyan had returned, there was no other explanation because, so far as he knew, nothing in the universe was stronger than a super saiyan.

"Human," he called out to one of the slaves that was standing near the door. "Get my children and take them down stairs, then protect them with your life." The man hesitated for a moment, not used to hearing that sort of command. "Do it now or I'll make sure you and your family never eat another meal," Dasala growled in irritation. The man hurried out the door a half second later.

The Arlean though for a moment, not entirely sure of what he should do, he hadn't thought that the saiyan Akira would actually return, especially not after ten years. Initially he'd planned for it, knowing that the boy's primitive brain would crave the blood of one who'd killed his friends and family. After all, Dasala himself had wanted revenge above all else, so how much more would a savage little monkey like the saiyan be crying out for it?

But then he didn't show himself. Days went by and there was no sign of him. Dasala and his small army of clones had deliverd their ultimatum to the world and still Akira had remained in hiding. The world had been conquered and there was only silence from the boy. Finally Dasala had realized that the mold for the clone army had left the planet for some reason, but thought that surly he'd return and so he'd continued to add clones to his already powerful forces. After four years he'd decided that either the boy was dead or he wasn't coming back.

But now he was here.

Which actually wasn't too bad of a thing, now that Dasala thought about it. After all, what could one saiyan do against any army of saiyans? Sure, none of them were as powerful as the original three that had managed to come out of the cloning cylinders, but what they lacked in power, they would make up for in sheer numbers.

The insectoid played with the metal control box in his hand for a moment and then typed in a command that he hadn't thought he'd ever have to use again. The command that would bring his entire force to him.

The last battle of the war between the saiyans and the arleans was about to unfold, and Dasala couldn't wait to watch the lone saiyan warrior match up against dozens of himself. It would be a short and, most likely, one sided battle, but in the end Dasala would finally have his revenge.

The last of the saiyans, Prince Vegeta's adopted son, would fall and that would be the end of the horrible race that had once been the scourge of the galaxy. It wouldn't be as enjoyable as it would have if Vegeta himself were there to watch the battle and see his race wiped from existence, but Dasala knew that he couldn't have everything.

He stood and headed outside to issue his commands to his clone army, but just as he opened the door a loud voice called out from above.

"I'm here Alrean! Come out and face me; bring as many clones as you want, I'll crush them all. Come and face the last of the saiyans. Come face the returned protector of Earth."

Dasala smiled, this was shaping up to be a pretty good day after all.

o

o

A/N: Okay, its late, I'm tired, I should be working on an essay or reading one of the three 10-15 page assignments due later this week, and I just spent the last two hours working on this. Sorry, but I just didn't have it in me to proof read. Hopefully this came out okay, there's probably a ridiculous amount of misspelling and poor grammar but for the reasons mentioned above, I don't care right now… maybe I'll care tomorrow or later this week, but right now I just don't. Anyway, if you do spot a mistake, feel free to let me know about it so I can fix it when I'm in a more tolerant mood for such things, if you don't, like I said, I'll be correcting it later anyway probably. Now then, what did you guys think? I haven't written a fight scene in quite a while, but it feels really good to finally have another one. Obviously in the next couple of chapters there will be a little bit of fighting… okay, actually I don't think I'm going to get to write anything but fighting until I reach an epilogue (boy I hope that's a joke). I was going to write responses to reviews in this chapter but then an author whose story I've been reading mentioned that he wasn't going to do it anymore because he'd seen quite a few stories removed for them, so I figure better safe than sorry.

A/N: In a totally unrelated comment, I'd just like to not say thanks to nobody for the reviews that they didn't leave. I'd also like to comment that the 820 may or may not be the most incredible thing I've ever seen at the top of one of my stories and that it probably isn't very humbling. I'd also like to not apologize if Hercule's dialog was difficult to read, there was (or maybe not) originally more that he said, but I decided against it because I don't like writing his weird speech… but then again maybe I do. Either way, when I first pictured him after all these years of living on Arlean controlled Earth, I saw him as this incredibly broken down person who still had that hero spirit kicking inside his trashed body. I have no clue why his jaw was mangled, but I couldn't imagine that it would be easy to talk like that and so his jacked up speech thing was born. As he probably will have very little dialog, besides a three thousand word speech in the last chapter, I don't think that anyone – or no one – will have any more trouble. Once again thanks to none of you for all or none of your wonderful reviews which I am, of course, not responding to. Have a good day and thanks for reading (or for skipping down here since I know everyone just reads the absurdly long Author's Notes at the bottom and ignores the actual story which seems to be never ending anyway).


	75. The Opening Battle

**Chapter 75: The Opening Battle**

o

A/N: Just a quick note. As I reread the last chapter, I realized that while I really liked the visual with the sunset and whatnot, it sort of screwed things up for this chapter. If the sun is setting over West Capital then as one travels east, it should be getting darker and so the fighting in this chapter would be done at night… not quite what I had in mind. So, I ask that you kindly forget about the sun setting (assuming that you remembered it to begin with) and just assume that, as with just about everything else in DBZ, all the events in this chapter take place during the seemingly never-ending mid-afternoon.

o

"I'm here Alrean! Come out and face me; bring as many clones as you want, I'll crush them all. Come and face the last of the saiyans. Come face the returned protector of Earth."

Kanata remained floating above the large compound for a moment, his Super Saiyan blond hair being tossed by a light breeze, as his keen aqua colored eyes watched for any sort of response to his challenge. He knew the Arlean was in there, the cluster of small and large buildings were the only things on the planet that he'd seen so far that weren't in complete ruins. After a minute or two he flew a short distance to the south and dropped to the ground at the edge of a large, rocky desert.

He couldn't be completely sure, but he suspected that he was fairly close to Central Capital, the city the former world government had been located in, and that the desert behind him was the same one where Goku and Bulma had first met Yamcha many long years ago. Bulma had told him the story once, but after a decade away, this desert looked pretty much the same as all the others he'd ever seen.

Regardless of its historical significance, the desert stood in stark contrast to the large compound made from some sort of red stone that rose from the ground before him. The buildings were bee hive shaped, as many constructs on planets inhabited by insectiod races tended to be, and surrounded by perfectly groomed fields of grass, flowers, and trees. A small creak, that Kanata was pretty sure was not natural, wound its way lazily through some of the fields and under several trees. All in all, if he hadn't known that the area was inhabited by a murdering tyrant, Kanata might have found it quite pleasant.

But it was inhabited by a murderer and a decent population of slaves were probably forced to do the caretaking. This place was an insult to all of the poor humans who lived in fear, buried under their dead cities and praying that none of the monsters who had destroyed their planet would find them.

The saiyan's jaw clenched and he ground his teeth as he glared at the buildings, another symbol of all that had happened to this planet after he'd abandoned it, of all the things that he'd allowed to happen by leaving. Well, he was here now and maybe when it was all said and done, the people of earth would be able to enjoy places like this once more.

ooo

"You can't just let him do this!" Pan yelled, her grip on King Kai's shoulder tightening unconsciously, causing the kai to wince and and pull away from her. "Tell him he doesn't have to do this. He's going to get himself killed!"

"He knows," Piccolo replied for the ancient martial arts master who was too busy trying to pop his shoulder back into its socket to hold up his side of the conversation. "Akira's not stupid… well, no more than any of the rest of you at least."

"Apparently he is!" the dark haired woman shot back. "What was the point of bringing all of the past versions of us back here if he was just going to run off and commit suicide anyway?"

"Pan," Gohan whispered as he placed a hand gently on her arm, "he just doesn't want anyone else getting hurt... he's trying to protect us – them – from what he's about to face."

"He shouldn't have to face this alone!" she shot back. "He deserves better than this."

There was a deafening silence. While none of the other Z Fighters would necessarily disagree with her out loud, they also all knew what Akira had done after their deaths. He might not have deserved this sort of end when they were still alive, but the last ten years were a different matter.

"He's made his decision, no one forced it on him," King Kai said at last, still rubbing his aching limb.

"I forced it on him," Pan retorted, "and so did the rest of you when you thought he was the murderer."

"That's not fair," Trunks growled angrily. "All of the evidence pointed towards him. Hell, we all saw what we thought was him when we died, what were we supposed to think?"

He was in the minority, however, as most of the rest of the group looked at the ground guiltily.

"We were supposed to trust him," Pan snarled. "He is our friend... he's family. We should have known he wouldn't willingly do something like that, if we even thought it was him at all."

The two glared at each other for a moment, before Trunks backed down and looked away. "You're right," he conceded, "we were tricked into blaming him, but..."

"It doesn't matter anymore," King Kai interrupted. "That happened ten years ago, nothing can change it."

Pan let out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. "I want to talk to him."

"You can't."

"Like hell I can't! I'm not going to let him throw his life away without trying to talk some sense into his thick head."

King Kai cocked his head slightly, his small glasses reflecting the omnipresent light of the afterlife, and said, "He doesn't want to talk to anyone."

Pan's smile had the distinct look of a predator that had just cornered its prey, "He doesn't have to talk... but he _will_ listen."

ooo

"Adi," Goten said in the voice he often used with Kumo when he was trying to get the little boy to listen to him, "We need to go help our friend. Can you tell us exactly which way he went?"

The girl was quiet for a moment and then whispered, "He beat _three_ of them. Everyone says they're invincible, but he killed three of them at once!" She looked up at their faces, perhaps searching for the wonder and excitement that she herself was feeling, "He's going to make everything okay again, he's even stronger than Mr. Satan… and he can fly!"

"Adi, please, where did he go?" Goten asked again.

She pointed to the northeast. "He asked if I knew where they came from... but all I know is that they usually come from that direction. And then he just flew off..." her voice trailed off as she replayed the incredible sight in her mind. "Do you think he'll bring my mom and brother back after he beats the bad guys?"

There was a definite shuffling of feet and several pairs of eyes were suddenly very interested in the ground and the crumbling walls of nearby towers.

Only Vegeta seemed immune to the uncomfortable question. He simply let out a small grunt of mild contempt at the childish question and said, "If they're alive I'm sure you'll get your chance to find them, if not… then things won't be any different than they are now."

"Vegeta!" Krillin hissed in shock at the callous remark. He glanced at the young girl, expecting to see a devastated look on her face and trying desperately to think of a way to cheer her up without getting her hopes set upon something that wasn't very likely. As it turned out, she was neither devastated nor in need of cheering up.

"He'll bring them back," she said with a confident grin, "I know he will!"

Vegeta snorted, but before he could make another comment, Pan said, "Adi, you need to go back inside. It might not be very safe out here."

The little girl nodded happily and practically skipped back towards the shelter.

"Well," Yamcha sighed, "at least she has some realistic expectations."

"She's been living in despair," Uubu replied sagely. "Everyone needs something to place their hopes in, even if it's futile in the end."

Trunks rolled his eyes, "Well, on that uplifting note... let's go make sure that little Adi still has a hero to worship when this is all said and done."

The rest of the group nodded and took to the air heading east.

ooo

/Akira/

Kanata's head snapped around as if he'd actually heard the words out loud instead of in his mind. It only took him a second to realize what was happening and then he immediately found himself wishing there was some chance he was imagining things and at the same time nearly wept with joy that he wasn't.

/Akira? Can you hear me/

Her voice was like sweat water after years of dehydration. Kanata's eyes squeezed shut as he felt his emotions try to get the better of him for a moment.

/Please Akira, just let me know that you're listening…/ Pan's voice whispered in his mind once more.

/Hi…/ he relplied, desperately wanting to add "my love," but knew that wasn't his place anymore, he didn't have the right to say something like that after all that he'd done. /It's been awhile./

/Akira, you don't… you don't have to do this. At least wait for the others./

He sighed and shook his head. /I can't do that. I can't let this go on anymore and I won't endanger the lives of more innocent people because I was too weak and stupid to clean up this mess when I had the chance./

/You'll die./

He was quiet for a moment, not completely sure how to respond and then said/Everyone dies. If it's my fate to die here, today, then so be it. I don't mind, I've defied fate long enough. My own death will be nothing compared to when you…/ his mental dialog broke off, unable to finish the sentence.

/Why are you doing this/ There was a hint of desperation in her voice now, as though she could sense that she was running out of time to convince him to give up his foolish plan.

/Because it's my fault things are like this. If I'd been stronger, if I'd kept you safe, if I hadn't been so afraid, maybe things would have worked out differently, but I wasn't.

/No, Akira it—/

/That's not my name anymore/ he snapped. /That person only exists in the other timeline/ He hated himself for the anger in his voice, he knew he was probably hurting her by saying what he said, but he needed her out of his head. When the fighting started, he was going to need every little bit of concentration he had.

/It _is_ your name/ she replied sternly/even if you're afraid to admit it now. No matter how much you try to pretend otherwise, you're still my Akira.../

He didn't have a response to that, which was actually probably a good thing since she wasn't done with him.

/...and if you think throwing your life away will somehow make everything right in the universe, then you're an idiot on top of being an ass./

/You're right, I can't make things right, not now/ he said softly/but maybe... maybe all those people I killed will feel a little more at peace when I'm gone./

She was quiet for so long, Kanata assumed she must have left. He wasn't sure if he was glad or not. Certainly he didn't deserve to feel the sense of peace and happiness that washed over him when she spoke, but at the same time he longed to hear the sound of her voice just once more. And then, to his relief and contrition, her words once again slipped into his mind.

/Akira, I love you. Those things I said to you…I'm so sorry. I was angry and scared and hurt and I didn't want you to know it. I'm sorry that I hurt you and I'm sorry that I let you think that I hated you. Don't think about those words anymore…just remember that I love you./

/I don't deserve your love... and I did deserve what you said to me./

/No, my love, you didn't deserve those words. Not then, not ever. And whether you think you deserve my love or not doesn't really matter. You have it./

A small tremble ran through Kanata's body and his mouth suddenly felt very dry while his heart seemed to be trying to explode out of his chest it was pounding so hard.

/I wish you would change your mind about what you're doing, but I can tell that you won't/ Pan went on in a quiet, almost remorseful voice/so I'll just say good luck and… stay alive, okay? We'll have all of eternity to be together, I don't mind waiting until after you've led a long, happy, productive life./

His first instinct was to point out that there was no way the two of them would be together ever again. He'd be in hell and she would be with the rest of their friends and family. That was just the way it was... but he couldn't say that, not to her, not right now. She'd figure it out soon enough, if she didn't know already.

/Goodbye, my love/ she whispered.

The doors to the compound opened and a small group of people stepped outside and began walking towards him. It would only take them a couple of seconds to cross the grassy field between him and them, whatever was going to happen was about to finally start.

/Goodbye, Pan.../

ooo

Pan took her hand off of King Kai's shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that were trying desperately to escape. Why did Akira always insist on being so foolish? Why couldn't he just think about what he was doing a little before he jumped into these situations? With the Z Fighters from the past helping him, he could have probably slowly whittled down the Arlean's clone army and then gone in for a direct attack when he wasn't so outnumbered. It was such a simple and obvious strategy, but it probably never even crossed his mind. No, he was so hell-bent on dying that he was going to go out in a blaze of glory that probably wouldn't even make a difference in the end.

"Pan?" Kumo's voice awoke her from her thoughts. "Are you okay?"

She sniffed quietly and wiped at her eyes to remove any evidence that she'd been close to tears. "I'm fine."

"What did he say? Is he…"

"He wouldn't listen to me; he's still going to fight them… by himself."

The youngest demi-saiyan was silent for a moment and then said, "It'll be okay, he can win."

Pan tried to smile, but didn't quite succeed. "I wish that was true Kumo, but I don't see how he can."

"He's a Super Saiyan Five, right?" Kumo pointed out. "I mean, I'm pretty strong, but I can't even touch Vegeta when he's going all out. I bet those clones don't even lay a finger on him."

"I hope you're right, Kumo," Pan replied. "I hope you're right."

ooo

The group approaching Kanata was close enough for him to see what he was up against now. Ten clones stood before him, dressed in strange armor that consisted of a circular metal breast plate was strapped to the right half of the chest, an arm guard made from the same metal covered their left arms from elbow to wrist, and gold hilted swords held in a reddish-brown colored scabbards were resting at their sides just below their brown tails which were wrapped around their wastes.

"So, this is how he responds? Just sending more of you weaklings out here?" Kanata asked with a smirk. "Maybe he just doesn't realize what he's dealing with yet."

The clones simply stared at him, their expressions blank.

Kanata sighed and shook his head. "If all he has left of his clones are a bunch of mindless drones, then this should be much easier than I thought." He tilted his head to the side, cracking his neck and then smiled as his body relaxed into his favorite fighting stance. "I'm ready whenever you boys are."

All ten clones simultaneously powered up to Super Saiyan, the explosion of power causing the ground to tremble while rocks and grass were pushed away from them. And then they shot forward at blinding speed.

Ten to one odds are pretty daunting when you are the lone "one," add in the fact that all ten of them were fighting at the initial Super Saiyan level and anyone would be excused for pissing their pants and running in fear. Kanata, however, was not anyone and ten against one would have been considered a bit of an insult in his previous line of work. On top of that, he wasn't fighting as a level one Super Saiyan…

He was at level two.

The first clone to reach him may or may not have even been capable of cognizant thought, but Kanata was pretty sure he saw a glint of fear in his double's eyes when his fist passed through an after image just as the lone saiyan's powerful hand closed around the clone's throat.

A small gurgle was all the noise that escaped the clone's lips before Kanata's fingers dug into the soft flesh and squeezing everything in his grasp into paste. With a quick jerk of his wrist, the clone's throat was no longer attacked to the rest of its body as the ground around them was drenched in sticky, crimson blood. It was a sight that would have warmed his heart not all that long ago, but now it simply meant there was one less attacker he had to worry about.

He turned away from his first kill just in time to see the three fists that were tracing towards his head. Kanata ducked and then spun away from several kicks that came at him from all sides. Super Saiyan Two or not, he was still bound by some of the laws of reality, which unfortunately meant that if enough people attacked him from enough directions sooner or later they would be able to hedge him in and score a few hits.

Of course, that was assuming they'd be able to surround him…

With a loud shout, Kanata's golden aura exploded outwards, knocking the clones away as if they were rag dolls.

A more humble fighter might have just moved up to the next level, knowing that even fighting a level above them, nine Super Saiyans would always have the advantage. Unfortunately, Kanata was not a humble fighter. After years of training under his adoptive father, who was not a humble fighter either, Kanata had picked up one of Vegeta's less desirable traits… he just couldn't accept that these 'weaklings' might be able to force him to transform. If they showed that they had the ability to move up to level two, he'd probably consider going to level three, but somehow he knew they couldn't and he also knew, or at least was confident, that he was more than capable of taking them out at his current fighting power.

One of the clones had recovered from the explosion of power and was charging forward again; the sight brought a smile to Kanata's face. As long as they came one at a time, he'd own them and from the looks of it, their simple minds couldn't grasp that fact.

The clone swung hard at his face, but Kanata spun to the side, catching the fist as it went past him and using the clone's own momentum to toss him headlong into one of his comrades who'd been about to attack Kanata from behind.

"Sei Ka—"

He had a shot at killing both of them, but before the attack was completely formed a third clone drove its knee into the back of his head, sending Kanata plowing face-first into the ground.

The lone saiyan was on his feet quickly, but it took him a second longer to clear the dirt from his eyes and in that second two fists found their way under his chin, lifting him off his feet and sending him streaking into the sky where yet another clone was already charging a ki blast.

The energy attack slammed into Kanata, sending him tumbling end over end into the nearby desert. His short flight was eventually interrupted by several sharp rock formations which tore at his skin and clothing as he passed through them, the final one collapsing down on him after his impact.

For a moment the battle field grew silent, and then the rocks shifted slightly as golden light crept out from between them before they were hurled away from the slowly rising form of Kanata. Blood trickled down from the corner of his mouth and a small cut along his hairline, but his eyes burned with an intensity which would have caused the clones to step back if they'd had the sense to realize how powerful the warrior standing before them was.

Kanata's eyes slowly closed and he took a deep, calming breath as his hands slowly came up in front of his body.

The clones charged forward.

At the last second, Kanata leapt into the air, performing a slow, graceful back flip over the nearest clone's head. The moment his feet hit the ground, his hand shot forward, relieving the clone in front of him of its sword. At the same time, his head jerked to the side instinctively as he anticipated the punch which sailed past him. In an instant, the sword had been swung around and buried into the chest of the now off balance clone, while Kanata's foot shot out and kicked the victim of his pickpocketing in the back before it had even had a chance to turn.

The clone that had been stabbed stumbled back slightly and was quickly pushed out of the way by its brethren as they continued their rush at the last of the saiyans.

Kanata's hand quickly reached for the closest of the clones. The clone quickly slapped the hand away, but not before it managed to close around the breastplate. The captured clone brought its knee straight up into the saiyan's face, driving Kanata's head back and brining a small stream of blood from his nose and mouth. The breastplate was ripped away from the clone's chest as the saiyan warrior was sent tumbling away.

Kanata landed on his feet, golden ki shimmering around the breastplate. A clone appeared directly in front of him, an energy blast forming in its palms, but before it could attack Kanata slammed the metal plate end-first into the clone's head. His double was dead before it even hit the ground, the metal breastplate sticking out of its now blood-covered forehead.

The saiyan didn't even glance down at his handiwork, he'd known it was a lethal strike the moment it had it home. Besides, the living clones weren't about to let up on him so he could admire the dead ones.

The seven remaining clones were once again charging forward, showing no sign of thought out tactics, they just rushed at him and ignored the losses they incurred… not that Kanata was complaining, of course.

Both of Kanata's hands filled with balls of glowing blue energy for a second and then he began throwing them one after another, filling the air between himself and his enemies with hundreds of the deadly attacks. The group of clones scattered, each heading in separate directions as more and more ki balls were thrown at them. Some of the ki balls chased after nearby clones, others just flew in straight lines – apparently wastes of energy for the outnumbered saiyan.

And then Kanata's plan became clear. It was a move Piccolo had used with great success against him when they were training with King Kai all those years ago. The balls that had seemingly been wastes of energy were in fact the true attack as dozens of them now hung in the air all around the clones.

A "guided scatter shot," Piccolo had called it. Kanata had called it one of the more painful things he'd experienced during his short stint the afterlife.

He smirked, held out his hand, and then closed it into a fist as the energy attacks that hung in the air closed in on the group of clones who backed away from them, forming a tight cluster as the ki balls exploded.

ooo

"Whoa," Krillin whispered as he came to a halt in midair. "Someone's not messing around…"

"Come on Krillin!" Pan yelled as she shot past him. "The battle's already started, we have to hurry."

"Yeah, but…" the former monk started to say, but then realized that the rest of the Z Fighters were already way ahead of him. "Oh man, I'm going to regret this, I just know it…"

He sighed and looked to the heavens, half wishing that there was someway someone could find a solution to this mess that didn't involve him fighting a bunch of crazed Super Saiyan clones, but knowing that that was not going to happen.

"Hurry up chrome dome!" Vegeta's annoyed voice carried through the air.

Krillin gave a snort and shook his head as he hurried to catch up.

ooo

Four clone bodies dropped out of the cloud of smoke, hitting the ground hard and staying there. Whether they were dead or just unconscious Kanata couldn't tell, but for the moment they seemed to be out of the fight and that was all that mattered. The other three had been in the center of the group and had been partially protected by their four brothers when the guided scatter shot had exploded.

"This fight is over," Kanata said with a smile. "The three of you stand no chance against me, not after that attack. If your master can hear me, he better have you three run home with your tails between your legs."

If the Arlean was listening – and Kanata was almost certain that he was – he did not issue the command for the clones to retreat; instead, the three remaining clones rushed forward, fists upraised.

Kanata bent backwards at the waist, dodging the first two attacks to reach him and then rolled onto his back as he caught the last one by the belts attached to its armor, kicking it high into the air.

"Sei Kaze!" the red beam shot from Kanata's hands, caught up to his double and ripped through its chest.

The remaining two clones turned just in time for them to see their companion die. One fired a ki blast that Kanata slapped away while the other used the momentary distraction to land a powerful kick to the saiyan's face. Kanata's hands came down and pushed off the ground, springing him away just in time to dodge the second clone's two handed attack from above.

The three Akiras stared at each other for a moment and then rushed forward. They collided with a clap of thunder and then shot into the sky, fists and feet flying at the speed of light. Over and over they leapt apart only to charge each other once more, each time growing more violent than the last, and each time Kanata seemed to land more blows than the time before.

With only two clones remaining, it was much more difficult to get them to scatter and isolate them in one on one situations. He could keep them from doing any damage to him pretty effectively, but it was a little more difficult to land the killing blow when you were constantly being attacked from behind. In the end, the solution was obvious, so obvious in fact that he was a little ashamed it took him so long to get there.

"Multiform!"

The two Kanatas grinned at the two clones and then attacked. Because he'd been forced to basically separate half his ki from his body, they were no longer as strong as the clones, but that two was easily fixed.

"Super Kaio-Ken!" two identical voices cried out as red auras exploded around them.

The clones did not look terribly impressed, but the two Kanata's didn't care as they charged ki blasts and fired them simultaneously. The two clones leapt away from the energy blasts, but they were quickly intercepted in the air and the hand to hand battles continued as the Kanatas hovered back-to-back each working their clone into position.

And then, in nearly perfect synchronization, the two Kanatas slammed open palms into their opponents' faces, stunning each of the Akira clones. The Kanatas grabbed hold of the clones' swords, spun around each other, and stabbed the opposite clone through the neck.

For a moment everything seemed to stand still and then the two clones fell away, seeming to drift gently toward the rocky ground far below.

The Kanatas landed and placed their hands on each others chest, reforming into a single being with a small flash of light.

"Well, bravo," a voice called out to them from the direction of the Arlean's compound. "I must say, that was quite the show."

Kanata turned, his eyes narrowing at the sight before him.

"I wonder if you can do it when the odds are more lopsided and you aren't just fighting my weakest clones," the Arlean said with an evil smile as a large group of Akira clones suddenly appeared all around him.

o

o

A/N: Sorry, I was not expecting this chapter to take two weeks to get finished… life just kept getting in the way for some reason, but hopefully the fighting was good enough to satisfy you all. For those who might think that this battle was a bit easy for Kanata (especially since he was outnumbered so badly), please note the last thing the Arlean said. These are just the weak, brain dead clones… the Guldo, Raccoom, Jeice, and Burter of the group, if you will. Things will pick up (and get much more difficult) in the next chapter. Anyway, after a little thought and a quick skimming of the TOS, I've decided that I'll go back to posting responses to reviews. If the story gets deleted, then that'll be my (and your) clue that review responses aren't allowed anymore. It would be sad to see those 835 beautiful reviews vanish into the ether, but I think my life will go on and I'll just repost the story anyway (sans the responses at the bottom). And so, without further ado:

Courtney: Ah, no worries. I wasn't feeling _bad_ per say, just tired mostly... and sick of homework, but then, that's not exactly a new thing for me. I'm glad you liked the chapter and Kanata's change of heart. Hopefully this one was good too.

kaizer: I wish I had room to complain about people who read but don't review, but I'm guilty of it too from time to time. Ah well, life goes on. I'm glad you liked the action; it's the part of the story that I enjoy writing the most.

Nova Flame: I was trying to establish that not all of the clones were as strong as the ones that have been fought so far. These first couple are sort of the creampuffs of the group (all good battles have to start off with the weak guys getting first crack at the heroes if for no other reason than to get them out of the way and wear down the good guys), there will be stronger ones soon. And yeah, subtlety is the name of my game.

Toni the Mink: I liked the part where Adira was thrown in the air too, I don't know why, it just struck me as a funny thing to do especially since he could pretty much stick her in orbit if he wanted to. Thanks for pointing those two mistakes out, I'll get in there and fix it sooner or later... plenty of other stuff that needs to be worked on as well. You'll notice that Gohan was right to move cautiously, if for no other reason than because I didn't want Kanata's fight to be interrupted.

Anouk: No problem, thanks for the review.

Francis Keenan: Hmm, too true... though you'd think Kanata would have been able to see the darkness when he had his younger self pointing it out to him every time he turned around. Ah well, he's starting to catch on. Hopefully by the end of it I'll have managed to turn this into a somewhat decent redemption fic, I suppose time will tell.

Nicole: Well, I hope you're feeling better. Thanks for reviewing even though you were sick (personally, when I'm sick I can barely get out of bed, much less read and review a story). I'm glad that you liked the fight scene; it seems to have been well received. As for how many more chapters there are... well, I seem to recall you asking me that before and I said something like ten

ashlee: Wow, thanks. I'm glad you liked the chapter so much, perhaps I should have thrown in some action sooner as everyone seemed pretty happy to see it at last.

Queen Asinoe: I'm glad you liked the fighting in the last chapter, it was nice to finally get to a point where I could write it in again. Yes, it is good to see Kanata/Akira heading in the right direction after so long as a semi-bad guy.

Rejhan: Well, I'm glad you kept your faith in him, if I didn't know what was going to happen, I probably wouldn't have kept the faith. I hope the final showdown lives up to the hype... I guess only time will tell.

darksupersaiyan: I haven't seen any stories getting removed either, I just got an email from an author saying she (or maybe he) had seen a story taken down and then saw an author's note by a different writer that said the same thing about a different story. However, I've also seen two stories that have kept doing it without any sort of repercussions, so I figured it'd be alright and even if it isn't I think somehow I'll survive the horror of having to repost.

Legend: Thanks, I'm glad you liked it.

donkeykong27: The double negatives (I assume you mean at the very bottom) were my attempt (and apparently an unsuccessful one at that) at being funny. Since I'd been hearing – what is apparently just a rumor – that review responses were no longer tolerated on this website, I figured I'd just "not" respond to reviews in a silly way. Anyway, I'm glad you liked the action. I agree that the story has been missing it for quite a few chapters as I've been bogged down with all this plot junk. For whatever reason the characters just didn't want to get where I needed them to get to and so we had to wait and wait and wait for the action to come back.


	76. The War Begins

**Chapter 76: The War Begins**

o

A faint breeze flitted across the grassy plains between Kanata and the Arlean, picking up loose blades of grass and tiny flecks of sand that had managed to escape the hold of the desert to the southwest, but in the saiyan's eyes he and his enemy were practically standing nose to… whatever that thing was on the front of the insectiod's face.

For ten years Kanata had longed for this day, for this exact moment, and now that it was here… it didn't feel the way he'd always thought it would. Part of his almost wished that he'd fought this fight _before_ going back in time and creating the alternate timeline, maybe even _instead_ of going back, at least then he could have appreciated the killing he was going to do on the level that seemed appropriate.

But he had gone back. He'd saved everyone that he'd been unable to save the first time and then some. He'd even faced the Arlean in that timeline, but, when given the chance to heartlessly slay his enemy he'd flinched away from it… and it was all because of them, his friends or at least a version of them. They had somehow, without his knowledge and without his consent, changed him even though he'd been with them for less than a week. They'd helped him see who he was before his life was ruined, they showed him that it wasn't his past self who was weak, it was the man he'd become who was the pathetic coward.

And so now, as he stared at the Arlean and his clone army, Kanata could not bring himself to revel in the fact that his moment of vengeance was finally at hand. His revenge was already complete, the Z Fighters would survive and his life, or Akira's at least, would not be destroyed as he held Pan's bloody corpse in an empty warehouse while the rain splashed down outside. They would all live full, happy lives; everything was as it should be. The only thing left was to make sure that the people of this Earth, whom Pan and her friends and family had always sacrificed so much to protect, were saved from the horror that they'd lived in since the Arlean took control of the planet.

As his eyes slowly rolled over the dozens of duplicates of himself, he knew – as he'd long suspected and even hoped – that his chances of survival were not great, but that hadn't mattered to him for a long time. He had nothing to live for in this life, better to die protecting something Pan loved than live the hollow existence he suffered through knowing that he'd been responsible for her death.

"I see you've finally crawled out of your hole," Kanata smiled. "This is probably a lot nicer than that cave you lived in."

"And I see that you've regained some of your swagger," the Arlean replied with a cruel grin. "After ten years you've finally managed to forget about the fact that all of your friends died blaming you?"

"I haven't forgotten," Kanata growled, his eyes boring into the insectiod.

"Good," the Arlean chuckled calmly, his gaze remaining locked on the lone warrior, not intimidated in the slightest. "I wasn't sure if the tiny brain of a saiyan brain could hold onto memories that long. Tell me, do you still dream of killing them? I know from experience that the enslaving device I implanted in your brain can have some… _unpleasant_ long-term affects."

Kanata flinched, his eyes breaking away from the Arlean.

"Hmm, excellent, that just makes things all the sweeter," the tall alien cooed contentedly. "You know, when I first came to this planet, it was Vegeta that I wanted to enslave and clone. The thought of him being forced to kill his family and friends, to be the reason for the extinction of his pathetic race and to have his genetic material forever serving me was a wonderfully ironic idea... but I couldn't be sure that he was the strongest fighter with you and the human Uubu around and I also learned that his savage little mind was remarkably strong willed.

"My next thought was to use his son, but again, others in the group would have been able to overpower him. Gohan would have been ideal, but his power was too dependant upon emotion, something that a slaving device has a habit of repressing," the Arlean paused and looked to the sky, his eyes closing partially as he enjoyed a particularly found memory.

"And then there was you. Possibly stronger than the others, even if you weren't as skilled as many of them, you were powerful enough for my purposes. Not as telepathically gifted, intelligent, or strong willed as most of the rest of the saiyans... and pleasantly unsure of yourself. I was never able to discover what made you this way, but it was everything I needed for my plan.

"I suppose I should give you credit for resisting the enslaving device for so long... for forcing me to resort to using clones rather than using the original, but it hardly mattered. You ran and hid and I was able to cut down your people one after the other." The cruel smile returned to the insectoid's face, "You know, I have recordings of all of the deaths of all of your friends… I still watch them from time to time; it's possibly the most heartwarming entertainment around. The look of outrage on Vegeta's face when his whore died…"

A faint glow sprang to life around Kanata as the muscles in his arms and face clenched and unclenched, his knuckles popping as his hands squeezed into tight fists.

"…the horror in Gohan's eyes after his fist was used to deliver the killing blow to the harlot he'd married…"

Small bolts of electricity slithered their way through the now clearly visible aura, but the Arlean did not seem to notice.

"…and the betrayal and absolute pain in the eyes of your little bitch as she was beaten to death..."

Blood pounded in Kanata's ears as a pure, blind rage coursed through his body, chasing away all rational thought and proving that the hatred he'd thought had diminished over the last few days was very much alive and well.

"Ahh!" Without a thought in his head besides the overwhelming urge to turn the Alrean inside out, Kanata charged at his enemy, his fingers curled into claws, ready to tear into the insectiod. The Arlean showed no sign of fear, though it was hard to tell if it was because he wasn't afraid or simply because he couldn't detect Kanata's movements.

With only a second to spare before his hands found their target, a fist seemed to come out of nowhere and slammed into the side of the saiyan's head, sending him plowing face first through the grass and dirt.

Kanata came up sputtering, wiping dirt from his eyes and spiting more of it out of his mouth, his rage drowned by a sea of ice-cold surprise.

"You see?" the Arlean asked patiently. "You're nothing. An animal who's completely at the mercy of his own instincts. Vegeta had almost developed the ability to strategize, but even his primary tactic was to simply plow straight into the enemy and kill as many things as he could. Were it not for your high power levels, you and the rest of your pestiferous race would have died out long ago."

Kanata let out a deep breath, visibly forcing himself to relax. "It doesn't have to be this way, you know. We don't have to fight," he said in a tight voice that betrayed his underlying anger. "You killed Vegeta and the others... and the saiyan race will die with me, you've already gotten your revenge. The people of this world are innocents in this conflict, why enslave them? There are other planets to resurrect your species on."

"These 'innocents' chose to fight against me when I first made myself known; they didn't want to relinquish control to a person who could have turned this planet into a paradise. Besides, they might not have all known you saiyans were around, but those who did were only too happy to let you stay... to let their women just lie down and spread their legs for you."

It took every once of will power in Kanata's body not to attack again.

"Regardless," the Arlean said with a smirk, "the strong dominate and pray upon the weak, this is the way the universe works. That is how their planet operated before I arrived, that is how the saiyan society worked from what I've been able to learn about it... it is even how my planet ended up working, despite the best efforts of Prince Alta and the royal family. This is simply the natural order of things, if they are destined to regain control then they will find the power to do so, if not... then they will be the slaves of my people, just like my beautiful clones."

"You don't understand," Kanata said, his voice tight with anger, "I don't care about how the universe works, or fate, or anything else… not anymore. My friends and family that you killed put their lives on the line dozens of times to protect this planet and for their sake I will too. You will either leave this planet and its people in peace or I'll kill you where you stand. You can still walk away knowing you've gotten your revenge, raising your children in peace, but if you stay… you'll die."

The Arlean started giggled, and then began to chuckle, and finally threw his head back and roared with laughter. "You think you can actually defeat me? Have you looked around? Can you not see my nice little army that is totally and completely at my command? You don't stand a chance!"

"You've kept too tight of control on their brains for too long," Kanata pointed out. "I don't have to kill all of your clones, just the ones standing between me and that control box. Once I destroy that thing, these clones will either die on the spot or be left as vegetables for the rest of their short lives."

"Maybe," the Arlean conceded, "but that plan only works if you can get to me and I promise you, you can't." He pressed a button on the control and said, "Kill him!"

The clones surged forward without hesitation, transforming into Super Saiyans as they charged the lone warrior.

ooo

The Z Fighters on King Kai's planet all tensed, their hands pressing hard into the back of the kai who was shifting uncomfortably under the pressure.

"You know, I might be dead, but I'm not invulnerable," King Kai reminded them through clenched teeth.

The warriors ignored him, all of their focus was on the battle unfolding on Earth. The battle that, just going by numbers alone, would result in their long lost friend's death.

"Damn it," Trunks whispered. "If they just would have attacked him a few at a time he might have almost had a chance."

"There's no way he's going to last long against so many," Goten agreed.

"It doesn't matter," Vegeta replied. "He's getting one last fight as a true saiyan warrior... after he passes over, we will go and welcome him at King Yemma's palace."

ooo

Kanata knew instantly that he would be overwhelmed if he remained at only Super Saiyan Two and had quickly ascended to level three. It certainly wouldn't be enough to win the war, but if he could just play keep away while steadily raising his power level, he'd be able to go to level four without causing all the stress to his body and the drain on his reserves that the upper two Super Saiyan transformations brought with them.

Eventually he would have to go all out, there was no doubt about that, but if any of the clones could reach level three or four he would be hard pressed to finish the battle before his tailless body was no longer able to hold the final transformation. He had to whittle away at their numbers first and slowly build himself up to where he needed to be.

Of course, it would help if the clones didn't beat the tar out of him first and make all of his plans a mute point.

Kanata leapt away from the first of the clones to attack him, landing a few steps inside the dessert, and then dodged again as a second clone's fist slammed into the ground where he'd just been standing, shattering the hard earth in all directions. A ball of ki shimmered into existence in the lone warrior's hand for a moment and then was thrown at the second clone, hitting it in the face and sending it skipping across the desert floor only to be replaced by three more clone.

The last of the saiyans dodged and weaved as he led the army of his duplicates on a little chase around rock formations and over sand dunes. Ki blasts exploded around him, but he couldn't let himself slow down long enough to answer them or even to look back and see how close they were. Kanata's energy continued to build, slowly and steadily, it wouldn't be long now before he'd be ready to move up to the next level.

Suddenly there was a clone standing in front of him, Kanata didn't even slow down as his fist slammed into the duplicate's head. With a quick twist of his body and a jerk of his wrist, he grabbed the clone and threw it into the cluster of enemies directly behind him. He lost a half second, maybe a little more, but not enough for the rest of the clones to get to him. As he resumed his game of keep away he chanced a look around and found that there were a few groups of clones that were trying to flank him and force him back into the larger group.

For a minute, maybe even two, he managed to stay just ahead of them, keeping the clones from hedging him in, but then as he flipped away from a kick that reduced a large rock formation to dust, a fist slammed into his back courtesy of a clone he'd lost track of.

The saiyan spun, his long blond hair twirling around him like a golden tornado, and kicked his attacker away, but the damage was already done. This slowdown was much greater than the first, it was all the army of clones needed to surround him and instantly he was fighting for his life.

Punch.

Dodge.

Kick.

Block.

Throw.

The battle was chaotic for him. Instincts couldn't help him to anticipate attacks now, they were simply coming from everywhere all the time. He managed to knock a few of the clones away from himself, desperate to get enough breathing room to ascend.

Screw the plan. It wouldn't help him if he was dead.

But they just kept coming. Fists and feet pounded on his face, chest, back, legs, and arms. Any part of him that was available to be attacked, was.

He kept fighting, kept trying to break through, but he couldn't. He couldn't even concentrate enough to use Instant Transmission to get away. The sound of cracking bone reached his ears and he prayed that it had come from the clone he'd just punched and not himself.

In a matter of seconds, the fight became so one sided that Kanata was tempted to simply relax and let death come, but then he spied a small section of blue, just overhead. An opening!

Desperate power surged through him and he shot towards the hole. The clones quickly noticed what the saiyan was trying to do and moved to force him back into the middle of the swarm, but he threw a small ki blast at the clone directly in front of him, knocking it out of the way as he burst out of the group.

Kanata put everything he had into his speed, knowing that he had to put some distance between himself and the clones. So long as they were only at level two or lower, he'd be okay. Now that they were all clustered together and following him in a relatively straight line, instead of swirling around him as they had been while he danced around the desert floor, all he had to do was keep flying until he was able to collect himself enough to power up. In just a few seconds he'd be at level four and then he'd show them why they were nothing but—

His thoughts and plans came to a sudden screeching halt as a red furred clone materialized out of thin air directly in front of him.

"Hello brother, you have no idea how much I've been looking forward to this!" the clone smirked. A loud cracking sound seemed to echo around the dessert as the powerful clone's fist slammed into Kanata's side, breaking several ribs. The saiyan instinctively began to double over, but before he could complete the unconscious movement, the clone's knee slammed into his chest as the sound of more breaking bone rang out.

Kanata gasped as the air was driven from his lungs, along with a fine mist of blood, as the sound of his sternum giving way under the blow reached his ears. It took everything he had just to remain in the air.

The pain seemed to overwhelm his senses and it took a moment before his dazed eyes could focus on the clone in front of him. The level four Super Saiyan's eyes were not blank as those of the other clones had been, they were sharp and bright and full of awareness.

This clone's brain was not completely under the trawl of the enslaving controller, it was acting more or less on its own.

Before Kanata could even begin to think about what this meant and what he could do to pull out his victory now, a shoulder slammed into him from behind, snapping his neck back painfully as he was knocked into the waiting arms of another clone who tackled him and began dragging him back towards the ground. Kanata fought valiantly, but more and more clones piled on until finally they had wrestled him to the hard sandy floor of the dessert and then his beating began anew.

He blocked out the pain in his side and chest as best he could and struck back at them again and again, satisfaction radiating through his injured body as several lifeless bodies dropped to the ground, but it simply wasn't enough. He hadn't anticipated there being this many clones waiting for him when he came to defeat the Arlean, if he had he probably would have gone a different route, but at least his friends from the other timeline hadn't joined him in this battle. It was bad enough that he was going to fail the people of Earth; he didn't think he could take the idea of his friends dying in this battle.

"Sei Kaze!"

"Kame Hame Ha!"

"Final Flash!"

"Kame Hame Ha!"

"Burning Attack!"

"Masenko-ha!"

"Spirit Ball!"

"Tri Beam!"

"Distructo Disc!"

"Kienzan!"

The area all around Kanata exploded as the destructive ki attacks rained down upon the cloud of clones that had surrounded him. For a long time all he could see was smoke and dust, but he was no longer being attacked and that was something to be thankful for.

Suddenly a hand grabbed his shoulder, not roughly as the clones would have done if they were going to renew their attacks, but firmly as he was pulled to his feet.

"Are you dead yet?" his own voice asked him with what might have been a chuckle or possibly a cough from all the dust in the air, "cause if you aren't, we could come back later."

"You have no idea how much I hate you," Kanata groaned to his younger self as he clutched at his injured ribs.

"Yeah well, just remember who's saving who this time," Akira was definitely was chuckling now.

And then suddenly they were no longer on the ground and the air was clear and easy to breath, or would have been if Kanata's ribs and chest had been a little less injured.

"Are you through playing hero?" Vegeta's gruff voice asked.

Kanata forced his eyes open and frowned. "You need to leave," he gasped, the pain in his chest trying to overwhelm his ability to block it out. "There's too many of them. Just go back to the time machine and get to your own time."

"And let you have all the fun?" the Saiyan Prince smirked, his aqua blue eyes practically dancing with the excitement of battle. "I think not."

"Um, I hate to break it to you guys, but, uh, there's a whole lot of Akiras down there and they don't look like they appreciated our dramatic entrance," Krillin said as he stared at the group of clones who were slowly becoming visible through the smoke cloud.

"Leave!" Kanata ordered again. "This isn't your fight, this is for me alone."

"Not any more," Gohan replied evenly, his voice leaving no room for argument and his golden aura blazing around him to emphasize the point even more.

Kanata looked around at the other Super Saiyans and human warriors, hoping to see some hint of a chance that they might relent so he could save their lives by sending them away, but all of them looked just as resolute as Gohan and Vegeta. He sighed and nodded and then lowered himself to the ground as the others did the same. As the smoke finally cleared, the Arlean could be seen standing amongst his clones, looking at the new group of warriors standing with Kanata.

"No... no, you're dead... I killed you!" the Arlean yelled as he caught sight of Vegeta.

The Saiyan Prince chuckled. "You? Please. My son was stronger on the day of his birth than you've ever dreamed of being. A coward like you has to rely on your little abominations stabbing real warriors in the back. Don't insult me by claiming that you actually killed me."

"You're one to talk about cowards," the Arlean growled as his gaze traveled along the line of Z Fighters pausing for a moment when he reached Akira and Kanata standing next to each other. He was visibly shaken at the sight of the long dead warriors standing before him and perplexed at the double Akiras. "You killed my people from space, not even brave enough to do it while you were still on the surface."

"I won't defend what I did," Vegeta replied calmly, "but trust me, I killed plenty of your people while Nappa and I were on the surface."

From the look on the Arlean's face, this little detail did not raise his esteem in the insectoid's eyes.

ooo

As Trunks watched the initial exchange between the Arlean and Vegeta, the memory of his mom handing him a mystery capsule when he headed out the door struck him and he quickly began searching his pockets for her little gift. He wasn't sure why he'd thought of it or what she'd given him, but Bulma had said that he and the others should use it if they were in trouble and, from a sheer number standpoint, they were in trouble.

Finally he managed to fish it out of his pocket and with a small "poof" there was a long, shiny container that looked like a briefcase laying on the ground at his feet. He knelt and opened it and then a large grin spread across his face at the sight before him.

"You're the best, mom!" he whispered, promising himself that when he got home he was going to treat her to ice-cream until she was sick of the stuff and then he was going to give her all the grandbabies she could ever want... assumingIcalla was willing, of course. He reached into the case and brought out his finely crafted sword, pulling it partially out of its scabbard and noting that the blade had been sharpened perfectly. He slung it over his shoulder, catching the straps and buckling them across his chest in one smooth motion and then he reached down and retrieved the other gifts Bulma had sent.

A pair of fully charged Brute Ray guns.

Enough for four out of the five saiyans who needed it to reach level four.

A plan began to form in his mind as he stood and began whispering to Tien who seemed confused, but still nodded.

ooo

The Arlean had heard enough. As impossible as it should have been, the last of the monkeys had brought his friends back from the dead... though he still wasn't sure how to explain the saiyan's twin. Maybe the twin was a clone, maybe it was a long lost little brother, maybe it was some sort of strange ki technique... it didn't really matter. They were still outnumbered almost ten to one and there was no way that three of the humans would be able to last long, pushing the odds farther in his favor. It was time to end things once and for all. He would have all of the saiyans killed – again – and then he could fulfill his dream in peace without the dark cloud of their continued existence hanging over him.

"Kill them," he commanded his clones. Instantly the host of Akiras charged the small band of Z Fighters.

ooo

"Everyone close your eyes!" Trunks warned as the clones charged and Tien stepped forward.

The tri-clops brought his hands up to either side of his face and yelled, "Solar Flare!"

The rest of the Z Fighters hadn't really known why Trunks wanted them to close their eyes, but one look at Tien's movements had clued them in a hurry. With eyes tightly shut they flew in the opposite direction of the clone army, Vegeta and Kanata firing quick ki blasts in the general direction of their enemies even though they couldn't see them.

When they were far enough away to safely open their eyes, Vegeta rounded on his son. "What was that all about?" the Saiyan Prince demanded.

"Well, I thought we'd probably need a moment to use these," Trunks replied excitedly as he produced the two hand held laser guns. "Our ticket to Super Saiyan Four, compliments of mom."

Vegeta scowled at the devices, "I told your mother to stop fiddling around with that stupid idea."

"Yeah well, it's a good thing she doesn't listen to anyone, isn't it?" Gohan said as he inspected the guns.

"There's enough power for four of us to transform," Trunks explained, ignoring the face his father was making at the idea. "Two per gun."

"Then you four will use them," Vegeta grunted. "I don't need a crutch to win my battles."

"Is this a good idea?" Goten asked. "I mean, from what dad used to say, the only person we know that can actually control the Oozaru form is Vegeta. What happens if we do more harm to ourselves than the bad guys?"

"Um, not to cut this short guys," Yamcha spoke up before anyone could answer, "but if you're going to do this, it needs to be now. Our friends over there don't look like they're going to be blind for much longer."

The others looked and saw that he was correct, the clones and the Arlean seemed to be quickly regaining their vision and were now turning to where the Z Fighters were standing.

"Do it," Pan said quickly. "There are more of them than there are of us. Chances are we'll hit them more often than anything else, right?"

"Well, when you put it that way, I'm feeling _really_ confident about this," Akira groaned, earning himself a scowl from Pan, but no retort.

"If it makes you feel any better, the Goten and Trunks of this timeline used one of those things and eventually were able to go to level four," Kanata said.

"Alright then," Trunks tossed one of the guns to Akira and the other to Kanata, "time to sink or swim."

The two versions of Akira looked at each other, shrugged, and then fired at Goten, Gohan, Trunks, and Pan.

"If this blows up in our faces, I'm blaming you," Akira said to his double as the four demi-saiyans began to grow into the giant apes.

"Yeah," Kanata replied with a grim smirk, "'cause that would be _so_ different from how you usually act."

In the distance, the clone army attacked as the four giant apes rose into the desert sky.

o

o

A/N: Yay for fighting… but boo for me taking freakin' forever to put this chapter up. I honestly have had it more or less finished since about Monday, but wanted to go through and proof read/ add some stuff to it and for some reason I just couldn't seem to find the time. Anyway, you have my humblest apologies for the delay. I'm trying to update quicker, but it seems that my teachers have no desire for me to have the free time required for such a thing. Unfortunately they have my future in their hands so I can't exactly tell them where to shove their tests and five page essays… oh well. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, sorry if the fighting was kind of glossed over a bit, I've discovered that it's really hard to write fights when people are outnumbered as much as Kanata was here. Now that he has some backup things should be a bit more detailed. Anyway, as always, please review and let me know what you thought.

darksupersaiyan: Yeah, I couldn't find anything either. I've only _heard_ that stories were being taken down, but it was from two separate sources so I thought there might actually be something to it and decided that it wasn't worth the risk... then last week I realized that I didn't actually care.

Courtney: Well, this is definitely the longest fic I've ever written... of course it's only the second fic I've ever written so it doesn't have a lot of competition. I'm glad you liked the Pan and Kanata scene; I thought it was kind of cheesy, but it seemed important when I was plotting out the chapter so I kept it in. Thanks for sticking with this story despite the fact that it just goes on and on and on and on and on...

Nova Flame: No! Oh, I think I'm going to have nightmares now about this story going on for thirty more chapters! That's one of the scariest things I've ever heard, I think. As much as I've enjoyed writing this story, I'm more than ready to be done. Only the fact that I would hate myself (and I don't even want to _think_ about all my reviewers reactions) keeps me from just saying, "um, I don't want to do this anymore so here's what would have happened in a nut shell…" Well, maybe it's not_ that_ bad yet, but the thought of being able to go for more than a day or two without thinking about this story is rather appealing. This fight will be semi-long (I'd hate to disappoint anyone after all), but not anywhere near thirty chapters.

ashlee: People getting in trouble for answering reviews was something of a rumor (apparently) that was going around. I'm still not sure if its untrue or not, but I've decided that since it isn't in the Terms of Service or anything else, I'm not going to worry about it. If my story gets deleted I will simply repost it and life will go on (minus some 846 reviews). Anyway, I'm glad you liked the chapter and the fight scenes, I've kind of missed writing them.

Rejhan: Wow, thanks, I'm glad you liked the fighting. The scene between Kanata and Pan was an annoyance to write (I always feel like I'm writing a love scene out of some after school special when I get stuck doing them), but most people seemed to like it so I guess it must have been okay. Don't worry, these battles won't be a walk in the park for anyone.

Francis Keenan: Actually, Kanata thinks the Arlean already has won. The saiyan race is dead for all intents and purposes and even Akira was killed when he became Kanata (sort of an Anakin - Darth Vader thing that I didn't realize until just now). Since he can't get his revenge anymore he just wants to make sure the people of Earth are free before he dies. That being said, you're right, he probably would pick death even if there was a chance to survive (he's only been looking forward to dying for the last 60+ chapters). Don't worry though, he won't have a death wish during this last battle… afterwards might be another story, but he wants to live through it.

Queen Asinoe: Funny you should mention thinking of Kanata as Akira. I must have written "Akira" instead of "Kanata" about fifty times while working on this chapter. A Freudian slip, I suppose. I'm glad that you liked the conversation between Kanata and Pan, I didn't, but most people did and I'm glad that even stuff I don't like seems to please most people.

donkeykong27: In fairness, the term of endearment "my love" was only used twice out loud (and mentioned once as something that went unsaid), but to each his own I suppose. I wasn't a big fan of the conversation between Pan and Kanata either, but for some reason they insisted on having it despite my desires to the contrary. Fortunately, there should be a lot less of that touchy-feely stuff happening and a lot more of the fight scenes (I don't think you're alone in feeling that they are my strong suit).

Nicole: I'm glad you're feeling better. When I get sick I hate staying in bed (unless there's a book that I'm interested in reading), usually I just curl up in my favorite chair, plug a Final Fantasy game into ye ol' playstation2 and enjoy about 15 hours of mind numbing, RPG action (usually go through a whole box of tissues too). Anyway, I'm glad you liked the fighting in this last chapter and even the little scene between Kanata and Pan. Hopefully this one was decent as well.

Toni the Mink: First of all: the Multi-Form thing. I can see what you're saying about him getting too powerful and it's something that I'm trying to avoid, but Multi-Form is hardly an impressive trick. Krillin, Tien, Piccolo, and even Cell (possible Yamcha and Chiaotzu, but I can't remember) all use it at one time or another (mostly just in the Saiyan Saga) so it doesn't require a lot of energy just a bit of knowledge. Akira couldn't do it way, way, waaaaaay back in chapter 23, but it has been ten years since then, more than enough time to perfect a skill that he already had the basic idea for, but not the fine tuning. As for him becoming a Mary-Sue (assuming that he isn't too much of one already), I'm doing my best. The problem though is that the bad guys have to be strong, but beatable and they're all Akira as well. So I have something in the neighborhood of 50 potential Mary Sues running around my story... Anyway, I'm doing my best; let me know if I screw it up, okay? Incidentally, did you catch Kumo's comment to Pan about when Vegeta is going all out? I kind of expected a question about that, but no one seemed to notice… guess it was ambiguous enough to slip under the radar…

chibi-kun-4545-2005: Yes indeed, the story is _finally_ reaching the end. Couple chapters worth of fighting and then epilogues and that's it (I hope)! I don't know that I can promise a happy ending, but I do promise an ending... well, it might be kind of happy... maybe bittersweet would be a better description. I guess I'll hear whether or not it was received as _happy_ when I finally get around to telling it to everyone. Thanks for the review.


	77. The New Super Saiyan Fours

**Chapter 77: The New Super Saiyan Fours**

o

Seeing one saiyan go through the Oozaru transformation was probably pretty intimidating, Akira mused. Of course, he'd never seen it from the outside until this moment, but as he watched his four friends grow, their eyes covered in a red haze and thick golden hair sprouting all over their bodies, he was pretty sure that just seeing one would be mildly frightening.

Seeing four was down right terrifying.

"Did I mention that this really doesn't seem like a good idea?" he asked Kanata who was also staring up at the colossal apes.

"I'm sure Trunks will be more than happy to hear your complaints," the older Akira replied. "It was his idea, after all."

The saiyans finished with their transformation and let loose four ground shaking roars.

"Eh, I think I'll tell him later," Akira decided quickly.

"Well, you're the one who has to calm Pan down," Kanata smirked, "don't get cold feet now." He turned and glanced in Vegeta's direction, "Can you handle your son?"

Vegeta scowled, "Who do you think you're talking too? Of course I can handle him."

Kanata nodded. "Well I guess that leaves Gohan and Goten for me and Uubu." He turned to the slightly nervous-looking mohawked warrior, "Who do you want?"

"Why me?" Uubu asked as he stared up at the towering monsters.

"You're kind of close to them, right?" Kanata asked. "Plus the others aren't going to be strong enough to take a punch or two if this doesn't work. No offense guys," he added to the other four fighters.

Tien, Yamcha, and Krillin looked far more relieved than offended; Eighteen had her usual battle-time, emotionless mask firmly in place, but was probably feeling the same.

Oozaru Pan let out another fierce roar and fired a red ki blast from her mouth, scattering most of the clones that had been flying in her direction. The clone army pulled back for a moment, probably getting some sort of signal from the Arlean to wait and see what the four giant, golden monkeys would do before attacking them.

"Looks like that's your cue to go work some magic," Kanata whispered to Akira. The young man did not look like he wanted to go work anything with his girlfriend-turned-enormous-monster, regardless of whether or not he was stronger than her when he powered up.

Whatever his personal desires were, Akira took a few steps forward as his aura flared brightly. When the light faded, the blond haired young man was covered in the golden fur of his most powerful form.

"You're wasting energy doing that," Kanata reminded him.

"You got your ass kicked because you _didn't_ do that," Akira shot back as he took to the air and flew up to Oozaru Pan's eye level.

A part of Kanata hoped that Pan would smack is other self around a little before she calmed down enough to complete the transformation into a Super Saiyan Four, but he didn't get a chance to watch as his focus shifted in the direction of two of the other giant apes. Oozaru Gohan and Goten had caught sight of the attacking clones and had apparently decided that they represented the most satisfying things to destroy at the moment. The seemingly-lumbering creatures were deceptively fast and agile and the two quickly covered the distance between themselves and their enemies.

"We might be off the hook if Goten and Gohan get really into fighting our friends over there," Kanata told Uubu in a casual voice. "Let's give it a moment or two and see what happens."

"Are you sure that's smart?" Uubu asked doubtfully. "What if they get hurt?"

"I don't think we need to worry about it too much yet, but if they get into trouble we'll step in."

Uubu didn't look very convinced, but he didn't really want to stand in front of a giant, berserk saiyan and beg for it to calm down either, she he nodded in agreement.

ooo

Oozaru Trunks was annoyed. There were things to destroy around here, that much was for sure, but a little golden man was standing in his way and didn't seem to realize how insignificant he was. Didn't he know that Trunks was the most powerful creature around? It was like a gnat trying to pick a fight with a lion.

Still the little man kept yelling something. A part of Trunks almost wanted to listen, just so he could once again laugh at how pathetic this little creature before him was, but the words didn't make any sense and that made Trunks frustrated and angry… mostly just angry.

"Listen to me, son," the little golden insect commanded, though the words were just gibberish in Trunks' enormous ears. "You are the son of the Prince of all Saiyans, royal blood runs through your veins, now focus and control yourself!"

Trunks still didn't know what any of those words meant, but he was quickly growing tired of playing around. He swatted at the annoyance with one of his huge fists, wishing it would go away.

The bug easily dodged the half-hearted attack and landed on Trunks' muzzle, glaring at him in a way that mad the Oozaru distinctly uncomfortable. This gnat was more than he seemed.

"Were you not my son I'd have to hurt you for something like that," the insect warned in a raspy, familiar voice. "Now have some pride and get a hold of yourself! If one of Kakarott's brats manages to control the transformation before you, you and I will be training in the gravity room from sun up until sun down for the rest of your life! Your little mate, Icalla, will have one hell of a time spawning grandbabies for your mother if you never get to go home and play with her, now won't she?"

Something about the noises the little, golden insect was making were starting to sink in. Some of it made the giant monkey nervous, almost afraid if it were possible to feel fear in his condition, and other parts gave him a sense of peace, the word "Icalla" seemed particularly important.

The image of a beautiful brown haired woman popped into his untamed mind and his body let out a soft sigh of contentedness. Trunks blinked and focused on his father's scowling face.

His body began to shrink.

ooo

The clones, as near as anyone could tell, were incapable of feeling fear at the sight of the two powerful, golden monkeys who beat their chests and roared in challenge to the army. The moment the two Oozarus drew within range the clones attacked. Golden ki blasts struck the huge apes from multiple angles almost simultaneously, knocking the two back as they let out howls of pain and rage, the scent of burnt flesh and singed monkey hair filled the area as the Oozaru vanished into the smoke from the attacks.

For a moment there was no sign of the large saiyans. The Arlean almost started to congratulate himself on the re-extermination of two of the monkeys, but before he could, a large shadow covered the area as something moved in front of the sun. The insectiod and the clones all looked up just in time to see Oozaru Goten hurtling towards them from above.

Most of the clones had time to leap away from the attack, the Super Saiyan Four clone even went so far as to grab his Master and move him safely away from the battlefield. A few of the clones were less fortunate as Goten's enormous fist slammed into the dessert floor, turning five of his enemies into a sticky red paste as the hard earth was shattered under the force of the blow.

Goten lifted his fist and looked at the gore that was smeared across his knuckles, his lips pulled back revealing sharp fangs that glistened in the sunlight as saliva dripped from them, he threw his head back and gave a triumphant roar. When he was finished, his mind immediately sent him searching for more things to destroy.

ooo

Oozaru Gohan was confused. He wanted to kill something. Specifically, he wanted to kill the things that had hurt him a moment ago, but some part of his brain was saying that this was not the best course of action. For an enormous, golden ape who was supposed to be an uncontrollable agent of destruction, it was an unnatural sensation for part of himself to want to _not_ kill things.

That unnatural part seemed to think that he should be patient and calm down, but that didn't make any sense. Why should he be calm if there were still things around for him to destroy? He didn't need to be patient; he was more powerful than anything else around him. All he needed was to kill those little golden men who had attacked him and then start destroying anything else that caught his attention. What more could he possibly want out of life?

Still, the unnatural part continued to speak soothing words to his savage mind. Words that said if he could regain control of himself, he would be able to become even more powerful and destroy even more things.

But why should he want to be more powerful? He was already the most powerful creature there was. Why should he be patient, what was the point? If he was patient that meant he had to wait and he didn't want to wait to kill things, he wanted to do it now.

Unfortunately, and annoyingly, the unnatural part was very persistent and seemed to be gaining more and more control over the rest of his brain. As it gained power it continued to whisper soothing things that pacified his base instincts by reminding them that once it was fully in control he would be stronger and faster and far more capable of doing all the things his instincts demanded he do.

The natural part of his mind gave out one last cry of defiance against the now controlling unnatural part of his brain, which came out as a loud roar into the desert sky, and then it was enveloped in pure beautiful logic.

Oozaru Gohan's face slackened and his eyelids drooped as though he were about to fall asleep, an almost peaceful expression fell upon his ferocious looking face and a smile played across his lips. He sighed as the next transformation took him and his body began to shrink.

ooo

"Pan, honey, I need you to calm down," Akira said in as soothing a voice as he could muster while hovering in front of an enormous golden Oozaru's face. "Come on, I know you can do it, you just need to focus."

The giant ape cocked its head to the side, considering him carefully.

Then she backhanded him into the ground.

"What are you doing?" Kanata demanded as Akira gingerly pulled himself out of the hole his rather unceremonious dismissal had planted him in. "Get her under control!"

Akira glared at the older version of himself and then floated back into the air, grumbling a healthy number of curses under his breath as he returned to his spot in front of Pan, most of them aimed at Kanata.

Once again he tried talking to her, hoping to snap her out of the instinct-driven rage that clouded the brain of those who transformed into Oozaru, and once again she attacked him. Akira barely managed to get his arms up in front of himself to block the ki blast that slammed into him. He was stronger than her, even in her current form, but he didn't want to do anything that would start a fight, swatting her attacks away seemed like something she would take as a challenge.

"Hurry up!" Kanata snapped from below.

"It's not working!" Akira shot back in annoyance. "She doesn't want to calm down!"

"She calmed us down for our transformation, you should be able to do the same for her," Kanata reminded him. "Just tell her you love her or something, she likes that."

So he tried.

She apparently wasn't in the mood for declarations of love.

"Did you piss her off or something before you got here?" Kanata asked as Akira climbed to his feet and shook off the affects of his latest trip into the dessert floor.

The younger saiyan was silent for a moment, staring up at the impressive form of Pan. "She's like a dog," he whispered as realization struck.

Kanata looked at his younger self for a moment and then started to chuckle. "Do I even want to know where you're going with this?"

"Pan told me that bigger dogs don't bark as much as smaller ones because they know they're stronger, they don't have anything to prove."

"Okay..."

"I'm stronger than her," Akira pointed out. "She knows it, so she's trying to prove that she's not scared of me."

Kanata's expression did not convey much faith in Akira's diagnostic. "I'll take your word for it," he said with a shrug, "but you might want to wait until you get back to your own timeline to explain your logic to her, we don't have dragonballs here to wish you back with."

Akira didn't bother responding, he simply closed his eyes and powered all the way down before floating up in front of her once again. Below him, Kanata was shaking his head at the second thoughtless waste of power by his younger self.

"Pan," he whispered softly, "honey, it's Akira. You need to calm down so we can get through this fight, okay?"

Her red eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn't attack right away.

"That's right," Akira continued, "I'm not a threat to you..."

She opened her mouth a roared, her breath surprisingly enough still smelled like her toothpaste.

Akira let the blast of air push him back, his clothing and hair waving wildly in the burst of wind. The rest of him remained motionless, his arms remained at his sides, his feet shoulder width apart, his head tilted ever so slightly down.

Oozaru Pan watched him closely once more, apparently trying to make up her mind about him.

"Please, Pan, help us win this fight," he whispered.

A small flash of light started near her chest and slowly began to expand its way outward as her body began to shrink.

ooo

The light surrounding Trunks took only a moment to fade away, leaving a brand new warrior behind it. His bulky muscles, covered in dark red fur, belied the speed that the new transformation had given him and his slightly darker than normal lavender hair spiked out wildly in all directions, cascading over his broad shoulders. For a moment he remained perfectly still, his red rimmed eyes closed and an expression of perfect relaxation on his face.

"How do you feel, son?" Vegeta asked as he landed next to the ascended Super Saiyan.

Trunks' eyes opened, revealing brilliant blue irises. "Never better," he replied with a small smirk as he reached down and picked up his sword, once again strapping it to his back. When it was securely in place he turned and looked off into the distance where he could see one large ape being attacked by the horde of clones while the other was beginning to shrink. "Looks like Gohan's figured things out for himself."

Vegeta's smile held just a hint of annoyance, "He would."

Behind them Pan's Oozaru form began her metamorphosis as well.

"That makes three," Trunks noted as he floated into the air, "Looks like Goten's the only one late to the party."

"Then let's go remind him," Vegeta agreed and the two shot off at blinding speeds towards the rampaging ape.

ooo

Pan felt great. In fact, she felt better than great, she felt amazing. The power flowing through her was incredible, something she never thought she'd personally be able to achieve. She'd felt this sort of power in Akira, Vegeta, and her grandfather, of course, but to experience it herself was mind-blowing. She'd never fully appreciated just how much power those three had until this moment.

She was covered in the same tint of red fur as her grandfather had been. Her black hair, which fell all the way to her waist in the back and over her amplified bosom in the front, was thick and wild, just as her grandfather's had been though much, much longer. Her muscles weren't quite as bulky as those of the male Super Saiyan Fours, but they still bulged in ways that would have made her feel a bit unhappy had she really taken not of them. Fortunately she was still admiring the power that she could feel pulsating off of herself.

She couldn't help but laugh for joy at the feeling of her new found strength, sweeping a hand through her hair and pushing it off of her shoulders. "Akira, this is incred—" she stopped as she glanced back at her boyfriend who was currently staring very intently at the ground. "What's wrong?"

He didn't reply, but quickly removed his shirt and handed it to her.

Pan took it hesitantly, looking at it in confusion, "What's this for?"

"I'm afraid that little Akira here is still embarrassed by the uh…'curves' of the female body," Kanata said from a short distance behind Akira. He was looking right at her, but Uubu was also keeping his eyes to the ground, a definite blush on his face.

"Curves?"

Kanata's eyes dipped just slightly and Pan looked down.

Her scream of embarrassment echoed around the valley and Akira's shirt was pulled on so quickly it seemed to materialize over her naked breasts.

Now it was Kanata who was laughing. "I guess all Super Saiyan Fours are bare-chested after the transformation," he noted with a grin.

Pan burned with humiliation, but decided against saying anything to prolong the topic.

Kanata watched her for another moment and then said, "Okay, the peepshows over, it's time to get to work."

Akira's desire to kill his future self had never been stronger, but it was dwarfed by Pan's homicidal intentions.

ooo

"Poor girl…" Pan whispered, feeling an incredible amount of empathy for her counterpart.

"Well, it could have been worse," the Goten from that timeline noted as he glanced at his niece and smiled.

"Not much worse," she replied.

"Oh, I don't know," Trunks said, "I think having it happen during a tournament with practically all of Otherworld watching might be a little worse."

Pan's face flushed with shame, but a backhand that sent the lavender haired saiyan crashing into the side of King Kai's house made her feel better quite quickly.

"If you two are finished damaging my home… again… do you think we could try and focus on what's happening?" King Kai asked. "It's not really very easy to show this many people the images from Earth, and it's even harder when you keep messing around like this."

"Sorry, King Kai," the three saiyans apologized, dutifully looking ashamed of their actions even if the kai could tell they felt nothing of the sort.

He rolled his eyes and nodded and the group went back to watching the battle unfolding on their home planet in silence.

ooo

As it turned out, Vegeta and Trunks weren't really needed to help Goten reach the next stage of the transformation. Gohan, having gained control of himself and changed into a slightly smaller and shorter haired version of his father's Super Saiyan Four form, was already beside his brother fending off attacks and gently calming the rampaging Oozaru down. By the time Vegeta and Trunks arrived, Goten was already surrounded by golden light as his body shrank down to its proper size and the near-splitting image of Super Saiyan Four Goku emerged.

"I'd say the tide has turned a bit, wouldn't you?" Gohan asked Vegeta as the two older saiyans watched the clone army once again move away from them and regroup while the Arlean thought of what to do next.

"Let's return to the others," Vegeta replied, "I don't trust this bug; he doesn't seem very concerned about your little transformation.

Gohan nodded and the three Super Saiyan Fours and one Super Saiyan Three hopped into the air and headed back to their friends, moving so fast they almost seemed to teleport.

Gohan could tell something was strangely off about the group the moment he laid eyes on them. Akira and Uubu were both still looking at the ground, Pan's face was bright red with embarrassment, Tien and Krillin seemed to be trying not to laugh, Yamcha had a rather unsettling look on his face, and Kanata was eying Pan with a smirk. Only Eighteen seemed to be immune to whatever it was that had happened.

Gohan was about to ask what it was that had happened when he noticed that his daughter was wearing Akira's shirt and realization dawned on him. Before he could say anything about it, or even decide if he _wanted_ to say anything about it, he felt the attacks.

The Z Fighters looked up as hundreds of ki blasts filled the air and hurtled towards them. The Arlean had apparently decided that enough was enough and ordered the clones to attack.

The pieces seemed to be in place for both sides; the battle was finally ready to begin.

o

o

A/N: Well first off, sorry this is so late and also sorry if there are lots of mistakes, I didn't really proof read it much. The idea for topless SSJ4 Pan is not mine...well, it kind of is, but I also saw a really funny comic on the deviantart website (in which Trunks and Goten transform Bra and Pan in SSJ4s so they can see some boobs) around the same time I was thinking about it so at least half credit has to go to light-sabe-r. There was going to be a whole lot of fighting in this chapter, but it just took forever to get four people to get control of their Oozaru form and so the fighting had to be pushed back a bit…. Sorry about that, but you would have been waiting even longer than you already have been if I didn't do it this way. Anyway, thanks for all the reviews, they are the wonderful motivation needed for me to skive off the essay I've been pretending to be trying to write for the last half hour or so and work on something far more interesting. You certainly don't have to review, but I always appreciate hearing what you liked/disliked about the chapters, so thanks.

Toni the Mink: Yikes! What a slip up, my bad. For me to read this chapter as many times as I did and still miss something like that kind of makes me question my powers of proofreading. Hmm, unless it was a Freudian slip on Trunks' part... perhaps he's secretly always coveted Goten's life of freedom from the sorts of pressure he's always under and that would include Goten's wife... nah, just a moment of me not paying attention. Thanks for catching it for me.

ashlee: Have I not explained that yet? I should have by now, but I might have glossed over it. Anyway, the little robot-thingy has a powerful anesthesia that it injects into the skin where it enters, all the victim feels is a small itch (like a bug bite) if he/she even notices at all. Basically it could have happened at any time, but in this case it probably happened during the night while he was at college. I'll have to go back and put that in if I've truly forgotten to mention it. Glad you liked the chapter.

Queen Asinoe: Well, I hope you liked Pan's transformation... ha ha, to be honest, that topless SSJ4 scene has been playing in my head since I first thought about them changing. I just thought it would be hilarious to have this intense battle and everyone getting ready for it and then... uh, Pan? You might want to cover up your chest before we start fighting for our lives. Is that just funny to me because I'm a guy? I hope not.

Courtney: Yeah, the Arlean here is a bit more of a bastard than he was in the other timeline. Ten years of absolute power will do that to you, I guess. I'm glad you liked the fighting, hopefully I'll do a good job with it next chapter since my characters wouldn't cooperate with me this time through.

donkeykong27: Yeah, Bulma's like a not so campy version of Batman (from the 60's TV show). In the water surrounded by sharks? No problem, just whip out the ol' Bat-Shark-repellant! Man, it's sad, but I loved that show... anyway, yes, Bulma is often quite prepared and it's a good thing too. I'm glad you liked the fight scene, it was tough to write but I think it came out alright.

Francis Keenan: Hmm, I don't know if the alternate timeline is going to come up... I think the time for talking might have passed them by, but who knows? For some reason conversations that I had no intention of writing pop up in this story all the time, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what my subconscious decides to do. It's true that Vegeta was a bad guy for much longer than Kanata and was still redeemed, but well... we'll see, I am _trying_ to go for a happ_ier _ending after all.

darksupersaiyan: I have a theory that saiyans can regrow their tails up until they reach maturity, but once their adults (or at least teenagers) their body just doesn't do it anymore. Both Goku and Gohan regrow their tails a few times as children, but never do as adults (well Goku does, but he goes through a rather strange process to get it done). I might be wrong, but I think Vegeta would have regrown his if it was possible, especially after such a big fuss was made over the dishonor of having your tail removed.

Nova Flame: Thirty chapters gets a big thumbs down from me and a little "boo" to go with it! If I'm not done in five or six chapters I'm just having a clone blow up the planet and ending it! Well, not really... that would be a not-so-happy ending, I guess. Still, definitely less than ten and probably not much more than five (if even that). And as for the re-return of Gotenks... yes, I mean er, possibly... ;)

Alexander: Thanks, I'm glad you liked it. The whole Kanata-Arlean thing went through a few rewrites. Kanata kept coming off as a pacifist for some reason and it took a while to break him of such a disgusting habit. Anyway, thanks for the review.

Rejhan: I'm glad you liked that line, it was one of my favorites. Yeah, the fighting is always fun to write, though it's getting tougher (a clear sign that I need to wrap this up quickly before I run out of ideas). Hopefully you liked this chapter's fighting as well.

Nicole: I'm trying to update faster, but it just doesn't ever seem to happen... probably a congruence of my boredom with this long, long story, my growing interest in other manga/anime, and the fact that my teachers all seem to have the same schedule in mind for big tests and/or essays. Ah well, life goes on... or at least it would if I could finish this story! By the way, you really should go read a book (despite its length, this story doesn't count), 'tis highly important! I always try and read at least a little before I go to sleep (not that 'Starwars' counts as great literature or anything, but it's better than nothing), it's good for your brain.


	78. Divide and Conquer

**Chapter 78: Divide and Conquer**

o

"Get back!" Vegata commanded the three non-android humans as the ki blasts descended upon the group. The once beautiful, blue desert-sky became an angry blood-red as it reflected the light of the deadly attacks.

Golden light flashed around Akira and his body once again sprouting the golden hair of his most powerful transformation. This time Kanata didn't even bother chiding him for wasting power, they needed all the power they could get as quickly as they could get it.

The ki beams were right on top of them when the group of warriors from the past and the lone survivor of the future launched their counter attacks. Instead of the smaller, more numerous attacks that had been fired at them, the Z Fighters all used their biggest, most powerful attacks. The eight large ki beams (and three weaker ones that joined in a moment later) that erupted from the super charged protectors of the Earth swallowed up the clones' attacks instantly and carried them out into space where they detonated in spectacular fashion.

"What are you doing?" Akira whispered to Kanata as they watched the clones for signs of the next attack that was sure to come at any moment. "Why aren't you transforming?"

"This is all I have," Kanata replied in annoyance, sweat beading on his face and one hand clutching his injured ribs. "You might recall that I was here fighting for a while before you showed up. I don't have enough power left to make the transformation without my tail."

Akira's eyes flickered towards his older self for a moment and then returned to the clones, his brow furrowed as a debate raged within him. He had never been one to think ahead or worry about strategy, he looked to Bulma, Vegeta, or one of the others for that sort of thing, but that didn't mean he was completely inept at it either, he had good instincts when he chose to listen to them. Right now those instincts were screaming that they would not survive if Kanata wasn't at something approaching full power. The problem was there were only a few people who could give the older man enough energy to make much of a difference and four of them needed their power to maintain their newly granted Super Saiyan Four transformations. Only Vegeta and himself were in a position to do what needed to be done and Vegeta was far and away the better fighter of the two of them, he would be needed for as long as he could last.

The solution was obvious – after a few seconds of thought – but he hated having to make it. Kanata was not Akira's favorite person, not by a long shot, but if the older man's survival meant that Pan and the others would have a better shot at survival, then there was only one thing to do.

Without saying a word, Akira placed both hands on Kanata's shoulders and closed his eyes as golden energy began trickling out of him and surrounding the older man.

"What are you doing?" Pan asked, her attention drawn to the small light display.

"He's the better fighter, he can do more with this power than I can," Akira whispered without opening his eyes. His teeth clenched together hard as he forced his power into the man he'd hated since the moment they met, the man who had wanted to kill him and take Pan for himself only a few days ago. "If he's at full power, more of us are going to live through this."

ooo

The Arlean was not really a man of war. He had some basic knowledge that he had picked up as a councilor to the King of Arlea, but had never had to worry about implementing it, that's what generals were for. His formal training was in the sciences. He'd dabbled into many different fields, as he possessed a natural hunger for knowledge, and was considered quite skilled in most of them, but political science was the area he'd truly excelled in which the reason he'd become the king's advisor.

At the moment, however, his curiosity had caused a large tactical error. He was watching the saiyans and their friends with great interest and trying to divine what they were doing.

The fact that they now had four of what they called Super Saiyan Four as well as one who could go to the level beyond that, disturbed him, but didn't really cause him much worry. The fact that he knew that even with their unexpectedly increased powers his clones could still match them was the reason he was allowing the Z Fighters to sit back and prepare themselves, but if he'd had a general as Prince Atla had had, he would have been informed of the mistake he was making.

After a few seconds, rational thought took over and he began to realize that – curiosity aside – it was pointless to watch them because he had every intention of seeing them completely destroyed.

He carefully pressed a series of buttons on the silver control box and smiled. They might have four Super Saiyan 4s, but in just a few minutes he would them show that they would not have an advantage for long… plus, he had one additional surprise that would complete the destruction of the saiyan race, regardless of what they were doing at the moment.

"Attack," he commanded all but one of his clones.

ooo

Further questions about Akira's actions were cut off as the golden energy began to shine with blinding light. The Z Fighters turned away as the roar of an Oozaru rang out from within the golden ball of energy that had surrounded the last saiyan from that timeline.

It only took a moment for the glow to recede, but when it did, a gold fur covered Kanata stepped forward, his tail swishing powerfully behind him.

He looked down at himself with an expression of wonder on his face. He wasn't quite at full power, but he was stronger than he'd been when he fought Akira outside the mountain and stronger than he'd been when he'd slaughtered the first of the clones all those years ago. Slowly his metallic blue eyes traveled upward until they found the tired and drained looking face of the young man who had donated so much energy to him.

"Don't think that I did it for you," Akira said quickly, "I'm only doing what I think is best for the group. I don't really care if you die or not, but I want to see them live."

"You idiot," Kanata whispered, ignoring the younger man's words. "You're going to get yourself killed giving up this much power."

"Nah," Akira almost chuckled, "I've got…" he swayed slightly, but caught himself and shook his head to clear it, "…plenty left."

The two former rivals (former same persons for that matter) stared at each other for a second longer as some sort of understanding passed between them.

"If you two are going to kiss, you'd better hurry up," Vegeta grumbled, breaking the moment. He pointed at the cluster of clones who were clearly readying themselves to attack, "Our friends are getting antsy."

Any retort either of the Akiras was about to shoot back with was cut off as the clone army surged forward, closing the distance between themselves and the Z Fighters in only a few seconds.

ooo

"Master, are you sure this is the best strategy?" a Super Saiyan Four clone asked as he observed the beginnings of the battle.

"Do not question me," the Arlean replied coldly.

"Of course Master," the powerful warrior replied meekly, "I only meant that you could send all of your forces out immediately and end this battle so much quicker."

The insectiod's large, red eyes flickered towards the clone and then returned to the battle he could barely follow. "No, the weaker ones will wear down the saiyans and then my special forces will finish them off."

The clone was silent for a moment and then asked, "When will I be allowed to destroy Akira?"

The Arlean smiled, "All in good time."

ooo

The hoard of clones slammed into the middle of the line of Z Fighters with frightening speed, forcing the defenders of Earth into two groups. All of the humans, plus Gohan and Eighteen were in one group, the two Akiras, and the rest of the saiyans were in the other. From there, the clones slowly keyed in on the different fighters and began to force them farther and farther apart until the battle was spread out all across the desert area.

Surprisingly, the clones weren't bothering to really attack too much. They were simply using their massive numbers advantage to break the Z Fighters apart. Even more surprising, most of the Z Fighters weren't struggling against the tactic.

Akira tried to remain close to Pan, but in his weakened state it just wasn't possible. He knew she was plenty strong enough to take care of herself – he was far more likely to get hurt than she was – but he still wanted to try and keep an eye on her… he was determined not to allow a repeat of what happened when they fought Ammit. In the end he managed to keep his cluster of clones close to hers, but was still separated from her.

Vegeta, the Super Saiyan Fours, and Kanata didn't really seem to mind the blatant divide and conquer technique. Uubu put up a small struggle, but it was a half hearted one at best.

Soon, most of the Z Fighters were pushed apart and the individual battles began.

ooo

Kumo was bored. Very bored.

He'd put up with his mother and the other women trying to keep him from flying all over the place. He'd let them think that they'd managed to put him down for a nap for a little while (he'd spent the time exploring the room and then flew outside for a little while, returning shortly before his 'wake up' time). He'd even accepted that they were all too upset about something to really play with him the way he wanted them to.

Now, he was just bored and bored little children were easily seduced by the part of their brain that asked, "What would happen if I –insert something the child should know not to do–?"

At the moment he was examining a strange room with a cylindrical device in the middle of it. It was a room that he'd been told in no uncertain terms that he was to stay out of. He'd actually managed to listen and obey for the majority of the day, but now, with his minders elsewhere, curiosity had gotten the better of him.

He'd seen a similar room at his Uncle Gohan's house (and been told to stay out of that one as well) and was reasonably sure that the 'big people' like Akira, Pan, Gohan, and his father played in that one for long periods of time. He'd never seen anyone use this one, but that was only because he didn't get to visit Capsule Corp. to often, and it seemed to him that this one as probably just as fun as the one at Gohan's house.

He floated shakily into the air and examined all of the buttons before him. There were so many and they all looked so nice, that it took a moment for him to decide on which one he wanted to press first.

His chubby – and slightly sticky due to the popsicle he'd talked Bulma into giving him – fingers slammed down on the large green button that had managed to capture his attention.

'TRAINING PROGRAM INITIATED' flashed up on the screen.

Kumo stared at the screen, scratching at his butt and cocking his head to the side in confusion. Then a little door on the side of the room opened and a small, silver robot floated through it.

The saiyan toddler's attention was instantly drawn to the machine and he wobbly flew over to it to get a closer look.

For a moment machine and child regarded each other (as much as a floating robot can regard anything), and then Kumo gave the drone a small push, knocking it back a short distance.

The robot, which was programmed to remain stationary unless reflecting ki attacks back at anyone using the gravity room, immediately floated back to where it was supposed to be, to the delight of little Kumo.

Again he pushed it.

Again it returned to where it was supposed to be.

Kumo was delighted with the game he'd discovered. No wonder his father and uncle all liked to play in this room! In his excitement he gave the little robot a thunderous smack, sending it flying across the room and causing himself to fall forward a little bit in the air.

Just as quickly as the drone had been sent flying, it returned to its place, a spot in the air that was now occupied by young Kumo's head.

With a loud crash, robot and boy's head collided.

The robot, which was unable to feel pain, did not mind the collision.

The boy, who was quite capable of feeling pain (and was also adapt at milking an injury for all the sympathy points it was worth), minded the collision very much.

With a cry of shock and pain Kumo dropped form the air, further souring his first gravity room experience as his little, trainer-pants-clad rump hit the ground.

This room wasn't fun, he decided in that instant, this room sucked!

His bottom lip quivered, he gave several small sniffles, and his eyes began to tear up as he glared at his former playmate who continued to hover in the air and ignore him. Finally, the little boy could take no more and he broke down and cried.

Roughly forty-five seconds later, he stopped crying, looked around, and then exited the room in search of someone who would shower him with sufficient levels of sympathy for the injustice he'd just endured.

ooo

Trunks remained almost completely motionless as the clones swarmed around him, a small smirk playing across his face while he watched them.

"All this just for me?" he asked with a chuckle. "I'm flattered. Give me a moment to stretch out these new muscles and I'll be happy to play with you."

He was in the process of calmly rolling his shoulders and twisting his neck from side to side when three clones, either because they'd gotten some command from the Arlean or because they had enough self awareness to be annoyed that they were being mocked, suddenly charged forward. In the blink of an eye Trunks' right hand had pulled his sword from its scabbard, sliced diagonally across the path of the nearest clone in front of him, transferred the weapon to his left hand and made a lightening fast stab at the clone attacking him from behind, and then sliced in the direction of the third clone as the sword went back to his right hand and slipped back into place on his back.

For a moment the three clones remained perfectly still, staring with unblinking eyes at the lavender haired Super Saiyan who had gone back to stretching, and then thin red lines appeared across the chest of the first clone and diagonally across the face of the third while a large red spot began expanding from the middle of the second's stomach. The three clones collapsed to the ground, two of them sliding apart and spilling intestines and brains on the desert floor.

"I asked you politely to wait," Trunks chided them, "you should have listened." He looked around at the other clones who didn't even seem to have noticed their comrades' deaths, "Well, whenever the rest of you are ready, feel free to see how you match up against a real saiyan."

His hand went back and rested almost idly on the hilt of the sword strapped to his back. The clones shifted into positions that would allow them to attack more easily, staring at him with their blank gazes, but did not move right away, either waiting for orders or trying to figure out - with however much free thought they possessed - why he was acting so calm.

The powerful saiyan's grip tightened on the hilt, his knuckles popping as they flexed, and then the feint scrapping sound of the sword sliding from its scabbard seemed to echo around them, even though the noise of the battlefield should have made it impossible to hear.

"Well, you guys all have swords, let's see if you know how to use them," he whispered as his eyes narrowed and his body tensed for the attacks he knew could come at any moment.

For the briefest of seconds, it seemed that the clones would ignore his challenge, but then one by one they reached for the weapons strapped to their waists and pulled them free.

Trunks licked his lips in anticipation. "Whenever you're ready..."

Apparently they were very ready as the entire swarm attacked as one.

Never in his life had Trunks possessed the power that now flowed through his body. Attacks that would have been impossible to follow only an hour earlier were now moving so slowly they might as well have been frozen in time. As the clones swords prepared to skewer him from a dozen different directions, the Super Saiyan arched backwards, watching calmly while the blades just barely missed him, and then twisted to the side to dodge the next set. He was now so fast that he would have appeared to have simply teleported to anyone fighting at the clones' levels.

"Is that it?" he asked as he reappeared behind the ring of attackers.

The clones were incapable of making witty replies, they simply turned and attacked again.

Trunks's sword became a blur and clone after clone had his sword batted away the moment it came close enough to engage the saiyan. More than once one or two clones managed to get behind the young warrior, but without even turning to face them, his sword intercepted their attacks as well. He had always been good with a blade, but with the sudden increase in power his skills were now almost god-like. In front, behind, above, or below, it didn't matter where the clones attacked from his sword was already there to block their attacks and if it couldn't get there in time, his body had already moved away from the danger. They couldn't touch him and he knew it.

"Pathetic," he spat as he sent four clones spinning towards the ground with a single swipe of his sword. "I always thought Akira was so bad with a sword because he never practiced, but it looks like clumsiness with a blade is a genetic trait."

The clones predictably didn't respond, they simply renewed their attacks.

Like his father (and in a different area of life, his mother), Trunks had no qualm with mocking a weaker opponent, but he tended to grow bored with the taunting far quicker than Vegeta. He had already reached his limit with these enemies. Even combined, the clones weren't much of a challenge to him, they were simply too slow. Had they the speed necessary to keep up with him, their numbers might have eventually posed a problem for him, but as they were now, they were nothing to fear. There was no longer any point in fighting a purely defensive battle to gauge his opponent's abilities and tactics; for all intents and purposes this battle was already over.

He shifted just slightly as his body moved to a more offensive stance, his blade drawing even with his waist.

The first clone to reach Trunks swung high, looking to take the saiyan's head off with one clean cut. Trunks' left hand shot out and slapped the clone's arms upward, causing the attack to miss high and leaving him completely defenseless as the saiyan's blade slid effortlessly into his chest.

ooo

Uubu should have been used to it, he supposed. For some reason the saiyans always got all the attention, even if he was - on non-Brute Ray influenced days - as strong or stronger than most of them. Still, he couldn't really do anything about it other than convince them that he was more than just another human fighter who couldn't keep up with the saiyans... of course, his current opponents were little more than robots, any convincing he did would only fall upon deaf ears.

Or _dead_ ears in this case.

In a move that he could only assume was due to the fact that the Arlean wanted to finish off the humans as quickly as possible so he could focus all of his clone army's attention on killing the saiyans, the clones that surrounded the Mystical One attacked immediately.

Uubu ducked under the first clone's punch and then did a back handspring to avoid a foot that tried to sweep his legs out from under him. A clone fired a ki blast at him, but either the clone must have been a weak one or the attack was meant as a distraction, because Uubu could instantly tell that it wasn't powerful enough to do any damage to him.

"Ahh!" his aura flared brightly around him, deflecting the ki beam without him even having to raise a hand against it.

An unexpected kick slammed into the back of his knee just as he was congratulating himself about his successful counter of the ki blast. There was a small, almost inaudible pop as the joint was dislocated.

Uubu somehow managed to simultaneously curse himself for losing focus and not sniffing out the sneak attack, the clone for performing the attack, and his knee for giving out on him. Without looking back he drove his fist into the clone's face, turning it into a gory mess and relieving a little of his frustration as the image of Bra's adopted brother collapsed without another word.

The young human looked down at his leg; the joint was already beginning to swell and would start stiffening up soon. He reached down, clenched his teeth against the pain that was already there and against the pain he was about to inflict upon himself, and popped it back into place.

Uubu had been in many fights in his relatively short life. He'd trained under the legendary Goku. He battled monsters and aliens bent on universal domination/destruction. He'd been beaten to the point where he'd wished for death. But despite all that, the pain that shot up from his leg was nearly unbearable. His eyes teared up and his breath caught in his throat, he wanted to scream out in pain, but refused to do so.

And then it was over. His knee still throbbed, it was still swelling up like a balloon, it was still more or less useless and wouldn't support his own weight unless it absolutely had to, but it was better than nothing.

His moment of performing minor (and probably sloppy) first-aid, having taken only a few brief seconds, he turned his attention back to the remaining clones and prepared himself as best he could.

With his knee joint taken out making it nearly impossible to remain standing on the ground, Uubu was forced to float into the air.

The clones wasted no time in attacking. Kicks and punches came at him from above and below as well as from in front and from behind. The Mystical One blocked those that he could, but his injured leg left him with one less limb to use for blocking and more and more attacks began to slip through his defenses.

In a matter of minutes, his defenses had gone from barely adequate to barely there as fists and feet rained down upon him from all directions. He was quickly forced to the ground, and then to his knees, and finally on to his stomach as the clones continued to stomp on him driving him into the dirt.

ooo

Vegeta grinned as the clones "forced" him away from his other companions. This was going to be an incredibly difficult battle and he wouldn't have it any other way. Deep down he knew his time as a warrior was beginning to come to an end. Sure, he had his saiyan genes to keep him in great fighting shape for several more years, but his body was drawing ever closer to the inevitable point were it would start to feel the effects of time. Not that he was planning on converting his gravity room into a sitting room anytime soon, but - as much as he hated to admit it - the younger generation would slowly start catching up with him in the coming years.

They weren't there yet though and this battle would be a glorious one. Seemingly insurmountable odds, warriors that had all of his saiyan advantages, and the world hanging in the balance, what more could he ask for?

He stood calmly on the desert floor, regarding the golden warriors that stood or hovered all around him. The Saiyan Prince couldn't help but like his lips in anticipation.

"Come on, you pathetic abominations," he taunted, "let's see if you're as good as the bug seems to think you are." Golden energy swirled in his hand before being launched at the enemies that had surrounded him.

Two clones were hit by the ki blasts and were sent flying through the air, but the rest charged forward, forcing him to switch tactics and engage them in hand to hand combat. Vegeta dodged a kick aimed at his head, his fist lashing out and catching a SSJ2 clone that was sneaking up on him in the neck.

A ki blast sizzled through the air, aimed at the Prince's exposed back, but before it could make contact, Vegeta grabbed the clone he had just punched and pulled it into the path of the blast. The explosion sent him flying through the air, but his shield fared far worse as it slumped to the ground, a smoking corpse giving off the pungent smell of burnt flesh.

It only took a second for Vegeta to right himself in the air, but that was a second too long. A knee slammed into his back, driving the air from his lungs and setting him up for the foot that was driven into his face as he arched back in pain. Vegeta was hurtled towards the ground like a golden missile.

The collision between the Saiyan Prince and the desert floor was rather one-sided, with Vegeta doing far more damage to the hard sand than the sand did to him, but it also gave his enemies time to form up around him once again. As he climbed calmly to his feet, he found himself face to face with the image of his adopted son. Unlike Akira's though, this face was devoid of emotion and would not look out of place on a corpse, which - incidentally - Vegeta planned on making it.

The clone punched at the oldest saiyan's stomach, but the Super Saiyan was prepared and the attack was blocked, as was the kick that came at his back, and the elbow that attempted to connect with his temple. Vegeta wasn't as strong as most of the other 'real' saiyans in this fight, Kanata, Pan, Goten, Gohan, and Trunks were all Super Saiyan Four or higher, but he was still probably the best fighter out of all of them. A lifetime of fighting both large groups and single opponents had honed his skills to the point were his actions didn't require any sort of conscious thought. His body just knew what to do and went about doing it unless told otherwise, which was actually rather nice because it gave him a chance to think about what needed to happen for him to win without hampering his fighting in the slightest.

He was a blur of motion, hands and feet knocking away attacks almost as soon as his enemies knew they were going to attack him, his body slipping around the ki blasts and attacks he couldn't block, but there was no room for him to attack and he knew he couldn't keep playing defense forever. Unfortunately with the odds he was facing, there never had to be an opening for him to attack, the group of clones could just keep swinging at him until one of them finally made contact.

ooo

The four non-saiyans who weren't endowed with the powers of an ancient, bubble gum-pink monster all very quickly came to the semi-conscious realization that this fight was way too much for them. Eighteen might have been able to hold her own for a short while against one or even two of the clones for a short while, but – just like the others – there was no way she could have survived the fight.

The only thing that saved their lives was the fact that they were all highly trained warriors and all arrived at the same conclusion without having to discuss it. They had to band together and fight as a unit rather than allowing themselves to be separated and easily overrun.

If they'd had the time to look around they might have found it odd that while the clones were generally surrounding the other Z Fighters, they were not engaging them immediately. That was not the case for the 'weaker' four Z Fighters. The clones that came after them immediately went on the offensive.

"Look out!" Krillin yelled as he pulled Eighteen away from a ki blast that would have struck her in the back while she struggled to keep up with a clone directly in front of her. The blast struck her opponent, but did little more than stagger him for a moment.

The android looked at her husband in annoyance and was about to inform him that she knew how to fight and could have handled it (even if she'd had no idea the attack was coming and probably would have been out of the fight if it had hit her), but before she could she was forced to push him out of the way and launch an attack at yet another clone.

In her haste, Eighteen had thrown Krillin a bit harder than necessary, sending the former monk skidding across the desert floor before he collided with Yamcha who was being overwhelmed by the clone who had zeroed in on him. The two older fighters tumbled in the dirt for a moment as they struggled to untangle themselves.

As Krillin finally pulled free, he found himself at the feet of a clone whose fist was glowing with red ki.

"Tri-Beam!"

The ground around the clone exploded as Tien's ultimate attack connected with its target.

Yamcha and Krillin leapt away from the destruction and glanced up at their friend.

"Thanks!" Yamcha called out.

Tien would have replied, but at that moment a clone appeared above him and sent him slamming into the ground with a powerful kick.

The clone did not hesitate for a second. He quickly raised both hands above his head and powered up a new attack.

"Distructo Disk!"

The clone saw the attack at the last second, but couldn't react quickly enough to avoid it completely. There was a bright red spay of blood as the ki disk sliced into the clone's arm all the way to the bone, the limb fell limply to the Akira clone's side, unusable.

If it felt the pain that it should have, the clone didn't give any indication of it. It simply turned to face Akira and fired a ki blast at the short warrior.

Yamcha tried to tackle Krillin out of the way of the attack that was speeding downward at the shocked warrior, but was himself caught in the explosion.

As the dust settled, both Krillin and Yamcha were lying in the middle of a crater, either dead or unconscious.

Eighteen - despite the logical part of her brain screaming warnings against doing it - turned her head when she heard the explosion and saw the sight of her husband lying very still face down in the dirt.

"KRILLIN!" she screamed as she raced towards him, all thoughts of battle having vanished from her mind.

A clone appeared in front of her and drove its fist deep into her stomach.

The android's eyes bulged as she both felt the blow and began processing a detached diagnostic of which android and human components had taken damage and to what extent. For a moment she seemed to be dangling from the fist of the clone and then slowly she toppled backwards, clutching at her injured stomach and cursing herself for being so stupid... even if it was over Krillin, the source of nearly all the things she'd done in her life that she'd considered stupid at one time or another.

Tien had managed to pull himself to his feet and saw the falling android. Pushing the pain of his injuries out of his mind, he shot into the air and caught her before she hit the ground.

"You okay?" he asked as he gently set her down, keeping one hand on her shoulder to make sure she didn't fall over, his eyes doing their best to keep track of the half dozen or so clones that were circling them like vultures.

"Krillin..." she whispered, not exactly answering his question.

"We can't think about that now," he replied without looking at her. "We have to work on surviving this first. We won't do them any good if we get killed because we're too busy worrying about something we can't do anything about."

"Fuck you," Eighteen growled, shrugging his hand away with contempt. "He's my husband and they k... hurt him. I'll worry about it if I want to."

Tien jaw muscles could be seen tightening under his skin as he forced down a retort. "We need to work together."

"Fine," her icy, nearly emotionless voice replied. "You keep them off my back, I'm going to kill as many as I can."

"That's not wh—" but she was already in the air and charging at their enemy. "Great..."

o

o

**A/N:** Wow, I don't think I've ever taken this long to update! I'd say that I'm sorry and that it was really not a good thing for me to do, but honestly, I've been trying to find time to write this and it just didn't exist. Between reading any one of the three 300+ page books I had to read (and actually know something about in my classes), writing a book review for _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_ (another long book, but definitely worth the read), doing an analysis of George Orwell's political views, and working a full time job… well, let's just say that I've been swamped and free time isn't something I've had a lot of lately. I have been working on this chapter every time I could find a spare half hour or so (which meant I was writing tiny little clips of the chapter and then having to figure out where they fell within the whole), but that's not the best way to write. I kept repeating and contradicting myself! Anyway, I apologize for the long wait, but I fear it was inevitable. Thank you for all of the wonderful review, I hope this chapter is close to being worth the wait.

Toni the Mink: To be honest, I'm not even entirely sure how Goku _did_ grow his tail back. Was it stretched out by those two weird-looking guys who were hanging out with the Supreme Kai during the Babi fight? I seem to recall reading that somewhere, but I could be wrong. Someday I should look at getting all the GT episodes and watching them so I know everything that happened in there (it's just hard to bring myself to do it after watching the superior DBZ). Glad you liked Pan's moment of supreme embarrassment (yeah, that comic was a little… wrong).

Courtney: Yeah, Kanata's seen enough naked breasts by now not to be very affected by it (at least not in a debilitating way like Akira). I'll probably be getting Revenge of the Sith sometime this week (what movie collection would be complete without it?). I did like the Vader scene, but I wasn't a big fan of the "Noooooo!" at the end. That was just a little too cheesy for me. He could have destroyed a lot of that stuff, but then just said, "Very well" and he would have come off as a much bigger badass… the way Vader was meant to be. Ah well, in both trilogies there were parts that were great and parts that weren't, overall I still liked all six movies (minus any scene with Jar Jar in it).

donkeykong27: I'm not quite sure what you mean by me using too many "probably"s and "perhaps"s, after reading your review I ran a quick search and found only three "probably"s in the whole chapter (story, not review responses). I mean, that's about one every thousand words or so and there weren't any "perhaps"s except in my review responses. It does look like I used those words fairly frequently in some of the last few chapters, so I guess you're right. Well, if I am over using words, then I apologize, I try not to, but the words "probably" and "perhaps" aren't ones that I normally pay much attention to. I'll try and work on that in the future, thanks for pointing it out.

Francis Keenan: I'll definitely take a look at the Gallio Saga once I'm through with this story and finished up with my reading-heavy classes of this semester. As it stands, I barely have time to work on my own story (as evidenced by my slow updating).

BballAnimeLover89: I thought you might like Trunks' power up, hopefully you liked his scene in this chapter too. I hadn't heard from you in a while, but I kind of suspected you'd comment on the Trunks action once it started up again. ;)

darksupersaiyan: Interesting ideas about tails growing back. It is true that Gohan's tail grew back when the moon was out, so maybe there is something to that… I actually went out and ordered several of the GT dvds with the episodes concerning Goku's tail regrowth. I'll watch them and see if I get any ideas about the tails, but most likely Vegeta won't go SSJ4.

CasseeinaMirror: Thanks for the review. I thought the idea of Akira having some _troubles_ helping Pan achieve her transformation was pretty funny myself, it wasn't planned or anything, it just sort of came out while I was writing it.

Nova Flame: Hey, sorry I haven't read and reviewed your last two chapters. I've gotten the alerts about them, but I've been crazy busy with class and other real life stuff. I haven't had time to read hardly anything lately. I'll review them sooner or later, it's just a matter of me finding the time. Good catch with the buckle-thing, I realized that that little… mess up was in there, but figured no one would notice. Oops. Oh well, I'll go back and correct it sometime.

ashlee: I'm glad you liked that scene, it was one of my favorites. Once the idea of all these people going SSJ4 hit me I started thinking it would be really funny if Pan had something like that happen to her. I hope you liked this chapter as much as the last one.

Rejhan: Yeah, Gohan's an egg head, but at least he kicks ass too. Glad you liked the Pan parts. I felt bad for her (in a haha, I'm so funny kind of way), but I actually felt worse for Akira. I've walked in on a group of girls without shirts (thankfully they still had bras on) and I must say, that's one of the most embarrassing things ever! Worse still is that fact that you really, really, really want to look… but deep down you know you can't (or at least shouldn't, unless you feel like getting the crap beaten out of you).

Nicole: Must be nice to have a life that's calming down… I can barely remember what calm feels like anymore. Perhaps I'll be able to remember in another three weeks! Actually, things are ever so slowly starting to return to normal for me, but then I'll have to start worrying about finals… Argh! School sucks!


	79. The Battle Continues

**Chapter 79: The Battle Continues**

o

A/N: Sorry, once again, about the long wait on this update. The good news is that I finished my finals (a major source of the slowdown) and have mostly recovered from a bout of pinkeye (which I'd never had before and never wish to have again) and a cold (it's been a long December so far). With the exception of the holidays and work, free-time is suddenly a bit more plentiful, so hopefully I'll be updating a bit faster from here on out. I'm going to be shooting for once a week updates, but with Christmas and everything, it might be every two weeks until New Year. Hopefully this chapter will be enough of an apology as it is full of lots of fighting-goodness (if such a thing exists). Anyway, sorry about the slow down of late, hopefully it's in the past and things will be quicker from here on out. Enjoy!

o

Most fighters felt something when they fought, good or bad there was always some emotion running through their system. Gohan, especially as a child, often took that rule to a whole different level, his emotions were the key to his power. In times of extreme emotional upheaval, his feelings would become overwhelmed and his hidden power would come to the surface.

And so it was a very odd sensation to have all of his emotions suppressed by the Super Saiyan Four transformation. His emotions were still there, they were just... buried, the way his true power usually was.

Not that it really mattered at the moment, he was already more powerful than anything his emotions could have given him. Still, it was a different sort of experience to fight without feeling much of anything.

Perhaps, it occurred to him, he was feeling something similar to what the clones felt. After all, they clearly had some sort of intelligence, no one device could possibly be controlling their every action. The slave controls gave them their orders - irresistible ones at that - but the clones executed those orders in different ways. But besides suppressing their freewill, the slaving device also seemed to leave them without emotion, just as Gohan was going to destroy them without emotion.

Had he been more capable of it, Gohan might have felt torn between his anger over what had been done to this Earth by the clones and their master and pity for the clones who really had no choice in the matter...

But he wasn't able to feel things that strongly, so he fortunately didn't have to worry about it.

It was as he considered these things, all while remaining alert for any attack from the ten or so clones surrounding him, that he felt the battle begin for Krillin, Eighteen, Yamcha, and Tien. Despite knowing how stupid it was, he allowed his eyes to stray towards his friends' battle. He didn't really feel fear for them, he wasn't worried – in the traditional sense of the word – about the fact that they stood virtually no chance against their opponents, but as he observed their battle he did feel... unsettled.

And then he saw Krillin and Yamcha go down and the unsettled feeling grew a little. It didn't quite become the emotion he knew he should be feeling, but it was enough to spur him into action and completely forget about the clones around him.

"Krillin!" he yelled as he rushed forward.

Unfortunately, his moment of distraction was a signal to the clones that it was time to attack him.

Ki blasts struck him in the back, slowing him enough for the other clones to attack from above and the side.

ooo

As Akira hovered above the desert floor, his long, golden hair rustling in the breeze and his eyes trying to keep track of the hoard of clones circling about him like wolves, he came to a frightening realization. He was scared.

Very, very scared.

He wasn't really that concerned about his own safety, though there was a bit of that too, mostly he was worried about Pan. He knew, given his current power level (and hers), the life he should have been worried about was his own, but he just couldn't seem to get the thought out of his head that a decade earlier in this timeline Pan had been killed by a clone and now she was facing about a dozen of them. Of course she was a Super Saiyan Four now and none of the clones seemed capable of matching that feat, but that didn't stop his eyes from darting back and forth between the clones that were circling him and the woman he loved who was calmly standing in the midst of her own swarm of clones.

Finally, he closed his eyes, let out a small, calming breath and forced himself to focus on his own problems, which were rather considerable. After all, Pan could take care of herself. There was little chance that this would end up like the battle against Ammit… right?

His concentration wavered and his eyes shifted back to his fur covered girlfriend. She was looking up at him. In an instant his fear was buried and a small smirk crossed his face as he winked at her, he couldn't let her know he was worried. The last thing he needed was for her to be afraid for him, she had to focus on her own battle.

His eyes returned to the clones as he did his best to take his own advice.

She would be okay.

She had to be.

The clones attacked simultaneously and Akira braced himself for the fight ahead.

ooo

Goten, like nearly all of the other Z Fighters, had been in fights with the world hanging in the balance since he was very young and even before that he had grown up listening to his older brother recount all of his father's incredible battles. The idea that the fate of this planet rested squarely on the shoulders of he and his friends was really nothing new, but this battle was still just odd. Not only was he being attacked by over a dozen Super Saiyans (which in and of itself was a pretty strange thing), but they all looked like his niece's boyfriend.

Still, a battle was a battle and once you got right down to it, it didn't matter who or what your opponent looked like so long as you came out on top. With the powers of a Super Saiyan Four coursing through his veins, he was extremely confident that he would come out on top.

Unlike Vegeta's side of the saiyan blood line, the Sons weren't very big on trash-talking. Not that they didn't partake from time to time, but they usually waited until they were more confident that they were going to come out on top before they started letting their enemies (or each other during particularly brutal sparing matches) know about the inevitable outcome. And so, as the clones attacked and forced most of the Z Fighters away from each other, Goten didn't bother flexing, or playing with a weapon, or saying anything really. He simply set his body in a stance he'd learned from his brother while playing on Mt. Paozu and waited for them to attack.

He didn't have to wait long.

After a moment of just staring at him or possibly of waiting to receive orders - Goten couldn't be sure which - the cluster of clones surrounding him collapsed inwards as the dozen or so Super Saiyans all zeroed in on the lone Z Fighter in their midst.

Goten easily sidestepped a punch, ducked under a kick, and then slapped aside a knee aimed at his stomach. There were a lot of limbs attacking him, but he was moving much faster and with a lot more power. Two clones attacked from either side, but in the blink of an eye the saiyan's strong hands had wrapped around their necks, one was tossed away from the battle with the flick of a wrist while the other was slammed into the ground with earth-shattering force.

Another came at him from behind, but his foot was already there to intercept the attack, catching the clone under the chin and flipping it in the air while Goten pivoted on his foot and drove his attacker into the ground with an axe kick.

A level three clone chose that moment to appear in front of the youngest son of Goku, ki blast already charged and ready to fire. The red beam struck Goten in the face, lifting him into the air, where a second clone was waiting. Again the saiyan was hit with a ki blast, this time sending him crashing to the desert floor.

For a moment, that part of the battle field was still and quiet, the only moment coming from the smoke and dust the rose from the spot the mighty saiyan had smashed into the ground, and then with a mighty roar, a huge golden globe of ki erupted out of the smoke and rose into the sky.

In the midst of the impressive display of power, Goten appeared, battered but barely bruised. The aura surrounding him slowly dissipated, leaving him in the midst of the clones once again. The saiyan warrior gave them a feral smile as he tilted his head to the side and cracked his neck and then dropped into his fighting stance, beckoning the clones to attack whenever they were ready.

They did so immediately and he spent the next several minutes using the cluster of clones as punching bags. None could touch him, except when his fist or foot connected with various parts of their bodies. One by one the clones began to fall under the furious onslaught from the red-furred warrior.

ooo

Pan stood calmly in the center of the cluster of clones, her feet shifting ever so slightly, digging into the ground for better footing while she waited for the attacks to come. Her eyes roamed around the group trying to block out the fact that every clone she looked at was staring at her with Akira's eyes. This would not be a fight where she could play nice, knock them unconscious and hope that they saw the error of their ways when they came to, she would have to kill someone – a lot of someones – who looked identical to Akira or they would kill her. She saw it in the cave when they were hunting the Arlean in their timeline, the clones would just keep attacking her until either she or they were dead. In her new transformation her feelings about killing the image of her boyfriend were dulled, but…

Unconsciously, her eyes shifted beyond them to where she could see Akira hovering in the air while still more clones prepared to attack him. As if he could sense her gaze, he looked down at her. She thought she saw a look of fear in his eyes when they met hers, but – if it had been there at all – it vanished as he gave her a wink and smirked confidently before turning back to his set of clones.

She was about to do the same when a powerful fist slammed into her jaw, driving her to the ground. Pan's hand shot out, catching her fall easily, while her foot landed squarely in the attacking clones face. With a simple flick of her wrist, she launched herself into the air, performing an almost casual back flip as she soared through the air and landing outside the ring of clones.

"You'd better come more than one at a time if you expect to keep up with me," she chuckled as she tongued the small cut on the inside of her cheek.

The clones took her advice and attacked en masse. Pan became a blur of motion as she dodged or blocked their attacks, occasionally knocking clones away from her as she became bored with them. She knew she'd have to start using lethal attacks eventually, but wasn't in a hurry to escalate things to that level.

She still had to get used to the idea that she was going to kill things that looked just like Akira.

ooo

A powerful double-fisted blow from a Super Saiyan Three clone sent Gohan crashing to the ground. He had barely struck the desert floor, when it exploded around him as several ki blasts collided with it and him.

When the energy attacks finally stopped, the powerful saiyan was lying face down in the dirt, his hands at his sides, his whole body completely still. And then, ever so slowly, his arms moved into a pushup position and lifted his body off the ground, sand and dirt falling from his long hair and fur. A few seconds later, he was on his feet, his dirty face staring up at the clones, displaying a hint of annoyance.

"That was a mistake," he growled. "If you're not careful I'm going to get angry... you don't want to see me angry."

The clones apparently weren't to concerned about Gohan's emotional state because they attacked the moment he stopped talking. One charged forward, aiming a kick at the warrior scholar, another fired a ki beam that would arrive at the same time.

Gohan caught the first clone by the foot with one hand, swatted the ki blast right back at the clone who had fired it, and then whipped the first clone around and slammed it into the ground, cracking the desert floor all around them.

Still holding the clone's foot, Gohan lifted the dazed fighter off the ground and used him like a baseball bat to club a new clone who had been attacking from behind. The two clones were sent flying through the air as Gohan released his hostage's foot. A quick ki blast later, their flight was over and they were either headed for King Yemma's desk or wishing for it.

The might Super Saiyan turned just in time to watch the Super Saiyan Three clone's fist slam into his face. Gohan staggered under the force of the blow, one foot actually sinking into the ground halfway up to his knee, but he did not go down. After absorbing the blow, he looked up with a small grin while his foot turned under the ground, hooking itself inside.

"Obviously you only look like Akira," Gohan chuckled, "he hits much harder than you do."

The Super Saiyan's foot rose up from within the ground, brining a large section of the hard desert floor with it, and slammed into the clone's face, sending it plowing through the ground.

A whistling sound reached Gohan's keen ears and he ducked without hesitation as a fist passed through the space his head had occupied only moments before. The saiyan scholar spun and brought his arm around, sweeping the clone's feet out from under it. In one smooth and seemingly-impossibly fast motion, Gohan was on his feet next to where the clone was still falling, one hand shot out and fired a ki beam at another approaching clone - taking it out of the fight - while the other chopped down on the falling clone as his knee rose under it. With a sickening crunch, the clone's spine snapped in half under the force of the dual blows.

As Gohan turned to see where the next attack would come from, he spied the SSJ3 clone leaping at him. The saiyan warrior arched his back to avoid the attack and caught the clone by a strap of its armor and its leg as it passed overhead. Using himself as the fulcrum and the clone's own momentum as most of the driving force, Gohan slammed the clone head-first into the ground up to its chest.

A kick to the half-buried clone's stomach sent it on its second - and final - trip plowing through the ground.

"Masinko..." the powerful attack glowed in Gohan's hands as he charged it, but before he could fire, his foot - seemingly of its own volition - shot out behind him, forcing him to bend at the waist as it connected with the face of a clone sneaking up behind him. With that threat flying through the air, the saiyan was free to finish what he had started, "Ha!"

The beam exploded the moment it connected with the SSJ3 clone, no doubt landing it in front of Yemma before the dust had even settled.

Gohan smiled with satisfaction, with the highest level clone that had lined up against him out of the way, mopping up the rest of his opponents wouldn't take much time at all. His smile fell, though, as he turned towards the battle between the human Z-Fighters and the clones.

He was out of time.

ooo

Punch after punch slammed into Kanata's face.

He remained unmoving.

Kicks hit him in the stomach.

He gave them no notice.

The clones swarmed around him, each doing its best to injure the mighty saiyan warrior, but his eyes remained locked defiantly on the Arlean who stood in the distance with a lone clone protecting him. Kanata couldn't be sure if the Arlean's eyes were good enough to see him across the expanse of desert that separated them, but he sincerely hoped the bug could. At Super Siayan Five, the level two clones were barely annoyances to him, if he continued to remain perfectly still they might eventually give him a bruise or two, but they stood no chance of actually hurting him. The energy Akira had donated him coursed through his veins like the sweat liquor he hadn't had since he demolished Heata's palace, leaving him feeling drunk on his own power.

He was invincible… or at least close enough for this fight.

There was nothing the Arlean could throw at him that he wouldn't be able to destroy effortlessly. Revenge would be his.

The Earth, his friends, Pan… all of them would be able to rest easy when he slew the Arlean. During the past few days he'd wavered back and forth about whether or not revenge was the right course. The Z Fighters from the past had awakened in him feelings and thoughts that he'd spent ten years trying to bury, thoughts that confused him.

He wasn't confused anymore. He was going to protect the Earth, the way he always should have. He was going to make sure that little Adi and everyone like her wouldn't have to live in fear anymore. Fortunately, protecting the Earth and the humans living on it meant he got to kill the Arlean and avenge Pan and the other Z Fighters. He could get his revenge for all the right reasons… even if those reasons were mostly just handy excuses to kill the bastard.

"It won't be long now, cockroach!" he called out to his nemesis. "Once I finish breaking your toys, I'm going to finish you once and for all!"

If the Alrean heard him, he didn't give any indication of it.

ooo

Eighteen was fighting like a woman possessed. It was one thing to send the weaker fighters after her - though that insult was plenty angering - it was quite another to... hurt her husband. He might be short and fairly weak compared to her, but he was willing to carry all the bags when she and Marron went shopping, plus... she loved him more than she would ever admit. She couldn't even begin to think of what she could do if he was actually dead.

Her fists, feet, and energy attacks lashed out with deadly accuracy as she used her powers to an extent that hadn't been seen in many years. Had she fought like this when she'd battled Vegeta all those years ago, he would have been dead and buried before he'd even realized he was in over his head.

Against these foes, with their numbers and their strength, it just wasn't quite enough. Not all of them were as strong as Vegeta had been on that day, but enough of them were that strong and stronger to make up for their brothers' weakness. Plus, they had all keyed in on her being the main threat and Tien being more of a nuisance, a nuisance with some deadly ki attacks, but a nuisance none-the-less.

Her powerful fists slammed into the face of one clone, knocking it away and seeming to daze it. Her android components drew power out of her core and formed it in her palm, but before she could fire, a kick to her unprotected back sent her crashing to the ground.

As quickly as she hit, she had pulled herself out of the hole and launched herself back into the air, even angrier than before, if such a thing was possible.

"I told you to keep them off my–" her tirade toward Tien was cut off as she caught sight of the bloodied tri-clops facing off against a clone who was taking the aging warrior apart. The android stopped on a dime and charged at the clone that was disabling her backup.

The clone never knew what hit it. One moment it was standing over a kneeling Tien who seemed too injured to fight back much more, the next a beautiful blond woman landed on top of its head, sending it straight into the ground.

Eighteen placed her hand on the hole she'd just driven the clone into and let loose an enormous energy attack.

The ground trembled, and then cracked, and finally energy beams erupted from some of the cracks. The area all around them collapsed as the attack reduced the foundation of their piece of desert to subatomic particles.

"Did I get him?" Eighteen asked as she stared down the hole. "Can you sense him down there?"

"They're like Akira and you," Tien replied as he struggled weakly to his feet, "I can't feel their power at all."

Eighteen continued looking down for a second and then fired another energy attack down the original hole. "Just in case," she replied to Tien's unspoken question as she turned towards the rest of the clones and shot into the air.

The android delivered a vicious uppercut to the first clone she reached, spun and kicked a second, and then ducked under a punch from a third. A tri-beam blast from Tien struck the third clone, sending it rocketing into the air, but most likely not killing it.

Blue energy appeared in Eighteen's hand and then leapt into the face of the next clone to attack her. The clone was sent tumbling away from the fight. She would have watched to see how much damage she'd done, but a fist slamming into her back denied her the opportunity.

Before she could turn to deal with her newest attacker, Tien fired three more Tri-beams in quick succession, knocking away the clone that had attacked her, plus another that was about to and a third that was above her.

She glanced down to call a quick thank to the human, but before she could say anything, she saw him take a stumbling step back as he tried to keep his balance, and then his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed, completely spent.

Eighteen would have screamed in frustration at the unfairness of it all, but that was beneath her. Instead she turned to face the remaining clones, including two that had already recovered from Tien's final series of attacks - the third seemed to have been finished off. Without Tien to keep them from ganging up on her too much, she was going to die. Even with him, their chances of survival had been slim, but with him gone it was only a matter of time. A part of her wondered if Krillin would be waiting for her in the afterlife.

Her beautiful face twisted into a scowl as energy began to flow into her palms and form into balls. If he was waiting, he'd better be ready to wait some more, she wasn't leaving until she'd sent some more clones ahead of her.

ooo

Akira barely had time to shift his head to the side as a clone's fist cut through the air where his face had been less than a second before. The young saiyan's eyes went wide, he almost hadn't seen that attack and the clone had been coming right at him.

Before he had a chance to contemplate the down turn in his chances for survival, an instinctive danger sense screamed out and he ducked without questioning the impulse. A second clone's foot passed just overhead.

They were coming so fast!

He dodged and blocked over and over, his limbs moving so fast they were simply a blur, his movements smooth and precise, just the way Vegeta had taught him. But it wasn't enough. If he was a blur, his clones were practically invisible they moved so quickly. One on one he would have been okay. Two on one would have been tough, but doable. Three, four, five on one, his chances might have been a bit better than fifty-fifty. Ten on one wasn't possible. He just couldn't keep up with all of them. It wasn't really that he couldn't block a lot of their attacks, you couldn't survive very long training with Vegeta if you didn't learn how to defend yourself, he just couldn't attack back without opening himself up to a world of pain. Defense was all fine and good, but sooner or later you had to fight back if you wanted to win and Akira couldn't find any openings to fight back. Every punch he blocked, every kick he caught, every ki blast he dodged all took a little out of him.

His power level was dropping steadily and there was no way they were even getting tired.

A fist shot towards him again, but he was able to slap it aside, knocking the clone slightly off balance and giving Akira a clear view of Pan's battle raging just below him. She seemed to be okay still, but...

His eyes narrowed, there was a clone coming up behind her and she didn't seem to be paying attention to it.

A ball of ki formed in his hand before the thought of what he was doing even flashed through his mind.

ooo

Pan felt a ki blast coming at her, but knew that it had no chance of hitting her. She kicked the nearest clone in the chest and then drove her hand into its face, lifting her boyfriend's double into the air as blood erupted from its nose.

The ki attack exploded just behind her, capturing her attention instantly. A clone had been sneaking up to attack her from behind, but the ki blast had sent it flying. Pan's eyes narrowed and then drifted towards Akira and the clones that where swarming around him. He was still looking down at her, though it only lasted a second before a clone's knee caught him across the face and sent him tumbling end over end away from her.

_'That idiot!_' she grumbled to herself as she turned back to the clones and attacked them with renewed vigor, the fact that they were mirror images of Akira (except for the ridiculous outfits they were wearing) no longer giving her as much pause as it had before. '_I can handle myself better than he can right now! Why is he still trying to protect me? He should be worrying about himself!'_

There was a loud snap as a clone's arm was shattered at the elbow from one of her attacks. She threw the injured fighter into a cluster of other Akiras getting ready to attack and launched a ki blast at the slightly tangled warriors.

The blast hit the injured clone in the back and erupted out through his chest, killing two other clones who were unable to escape the attack.

Pan froze, her eyes growing large as the three Akiras dropped from the sky like stones, hitting the ground with a sickening crunch.

ooo

Golden bolts of electricity crackled around Kanata and then his left hand shot out to the side, burying itself into the neck of one of the clones who was attacking him, the Super Saiyan's eyes never left the Arlean. There was a wet, slurping noise as he slowly pulled his gore covered fist from the mess that was once a neck, and then the corpse dropped to the desert floor.

The other clones continued to attack him to no avail and he continued to ignore their inconsequential attacks. Slowly he lifted his right hand to his chest and then, in the blink of an eye, it snapped out and backhanded a clone across the face.

The clone spun on its axis six times before it hit the ground... its head spun eight.

Two clones charged at him from straight ahead. He caught them by their necks and slammed their heads together, showering himself in gore and making it difficult to tell where one clone's face ended and the other's began as they fell to the ground.

He was about to kill another of the clones when out of the corner of his eye he spotted six golden specks in the distance, coming not from the Arlean's palace, but from farther to the east... the direction that the Arlean's mountain lair had been in the other timeline. It took him a few seconds before he realized that he couldn't sense any sort of power level coming off of them, just like he couldn't feel the other clones, but for the life of him he couldn't think of a single reason to hold back six fighters from a war like this.

An odd feeling of unsettlement passed through him as he watched the golden objects grow closer. The saiyans eyes shifted back to the Arlean who was still calmly watching the battle while a red furred clone guarded him. The Arlean was much too calm, something was wrong...

ooo

Hercule stared out of the door to the underground shelter, his mangled face creased with concern. He couldn't see the lights flashing back and forth across the sky or feel the ground tremble beneath his feet, but he knew that his son-in-law and granddaughter where fighting somewhere on the planet. Perhaps even more worrying was the fact that they were fighting an enemy that had already killed them once and would not hesitate to do so a second time.

His old, overprotective habits that hadn't seen the light of day for many years were trying desperately to kick in, but they would do him no good now… not that they ever did him any good before. It was difficult to shelter a girl from the dangers of the world when she was always so quick to run towards them, sometimes literally dragging him with her while he tried to hold her back.

Would she make it through this fight or would it be like last time? Would he turn around and find a broken warrior bleeding all over his floors, struggling to remain alive only so he could deliver the news that Pan was dead again or would she return triumphant from the battle to tell him all about the daring deeds she and her friends had just preformed? He hoped for the later, but feared that the former was the more likely of the two.

Of course, he'd seen Pan and the rest of the Z Fighters win against impossible odds before, he really knew that he shouldn't doubt their abilities after everything he'd seen. But he wasn't the same man who'd watched Goku and Vegeta fight Majin Buu, or the man who'd gone with his granddaughter to try and stop Baby from completing his victory over the saiyans, or seen Goku destroy Omega Shenron. He was the man who had been tortured for months while the Earth was brought under the rule of a madman because all of its heroes, his friends and family, were already dead and couldn't defend the planet.

Ten years in hell tended to give you a different outlook on life.

"Mr. Satan?" a quiet voice asked as a small hand tugged at his pant leg.

Hercule looked down and gave little Adi what was supposed to be a smile. The 'smile' probably wasn't very pleasant to look at, or very comforting for that matter, but the young girl grinned back at him anyway.

"They're going to beat the monsters, they're really strong."

His mangled smile widened. Ah, to be young and full of optimism, even in this day and age. He could see in her eyes that none of his fears would cause her faith in her newfound idols to waver in the slightest. She was certain they would win simply because they were heroes, and larger than life ones at that.

Her faith was blind and perhaps unrealistic, but it never hurt to have a little blind faith during such troubled times. Once he himself had inspired such declarations of assured victory, such unwavering faith, but now everyone knew better. There were no real assurances and heroes could be killed, even larger than life ones.

But perhaps, just for today, he'd allow himself to be young once more. To have complete and utter faith in his friends and family, to know that they would return healthy and filled with the rush of victory, declaring that the dark times were over and a new age was upon mankind…

And so he and Adi continued staring off into the distance, quietly observing a battle that neither of them could see, knowing that somewhere out there, heroes were winning their battles, because that's what heroes did.

ooo

Akira barely managed to dodge a ki blast, but took a knee to the gut that double him over and drove the air from his lungs. He instinctively threw his hand in front of his face, blocking the punch a new clone had aimed at him, but could not stop yet another clone from grabbing him by the hair and throwing him like a spear towards the ground. Just as the young Super Saiyan hit the ground, another clone caught him by the back of the head and dragged him through the rocks and sand of the desert floor. The clone released Akira and the one who had originally thrown him to the ground was right there to kick him into a large rock formation.

As the cloud of dust from the explosion of the long-standing rocks was gradually carried away by the breeze, Akira could be seen laying half buried in the ruble, his eyes closed and blood running down the side of his face from a large gash across his forehead.

One of the clones floated above the still form of the saiyan, lifted its hands above its face as a ball of ki formed in its palms and then brought them down as an enormous ki blast rocketed towards Akira.

The young saiyan's eyes snapped open. In an instant he'd squirmed out from under the rocks that were pinning him down and leapt to the side as the ground where he'd been laying exploded, sending a billowing mushroom cloud into the sky.

Akira pushed off the ground and shot into the smoke cloud, thanking his maker for the ability to hide his energy like he could. The clone that had fired the attack was still hovering in the air, waiting calmly for the smoke to dissipate. It was clearly not expecting an attack because when Akira burst out of the cloud, the clone was slow to protect itself.

The young saiyan's knee slammed into the clone's face, snapping its head back painfully. Akira spun and drove his right elbow into his double's exposed neck with a resounding crack as vertebrae snapped under the force of the blow and then placed his left hand, which was already glowing with golden energy, against the clone's chest.

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, and then the clone's back exploded as the enormous beam of energy shot out of it. By pure, unexplainable luck, the blast not only killed the clone that he was currently facing, but also struck a second clone, that had been flying towards them, in the face, either killing it or knocking it unconscious. Akira blinked in surprise, he hadn't even seen that clone.

ooo

Painfully slowly, Pan's body forced her to draw air into her lungs. Her yellow eyes remained wide as she stared down at the deceased clones.

They weren't Akira, of course... she knew that. But deep down, the sight of her boyfriend's broken body lying on the desert floor caused her insides to freeze up even with the semi-emotionless mental state of the Super Saiyan Four transformation. In his weakened state, it wouldn't take much to leave him a bloody, lifeless corpse lying in the dirt, his vacant, unseeing eyes staring right through her...

She shook her head, trying to clear the thought from her mind, but it dug in deep and refused to let her go.

The powerful female warrior swallowed hard and glanced to the side where she could see Akira hovering in the air, bruised and bloodied, but still very much alive. It looked like he had even killed a few of the clones attacking him… perhaps he could survive this battle.

Yes, that was it. He was fine, he could handle himself… Goku's soul and all that.

She closed her eyes and took a cleansing breath… he would be fine.

A knee to the back of the head which sent her tumbling end over end awoke her from her worried musings, reminding her that no matter what – or who – the clones might look like, they still wanted to kill her. Until they were dealt with, there was no point in worrying about Akira.

…because he'd be fine, of course.

The next clone to approach her was grabbed by its armor and thrown over her shoulder into two other clones that had been preparing to attack her from behind. Instincts demanded that she blast the three tangled fighters into subatomic particles before they managed to collect themselves and attack her again, but she hesitated and before she could recover a ki ball exploded against her back, sending her flying at the ground.

With only inches to spare, the saiyan's aura flared brightly, causing the ground below her to cave in under the pressure as she halted her dissent.

Before she could fire a retaliatory blast at the clone that had knocked her from the air, a second clone's foot slammed into her face, driving her headfirst into the ground up to her waist.

For a moment, that particular part of the battle field was perfectly still. And then the ground around the hole Pan was in began to crack and glow with golden light. In a frightening display of power, the ground and the clone standing over the mighty Super Saiyan vanished as her aura exploded outward. When the golden sphere of light faded, Pan was hovering upside down in the middle of a large crater.

The clone that had kicked her into the ground was imbedded in the wall of the newly formed hole in the desert, its eyes closed, its hair black, and copious amounts of blood running out of its body.

Slowly Pan righted herself, carefully avoiding looking at the mostly-likely deceased clone. She had resigned herself to the idea that she would have to kill them, but she was also aware of the fact that looking at their corpses would only bring fears that could freeze her in place and leave her wide open to attack.

She was just going to have to kill her enemies without actually seeing them die… how hard could it be?

ooo

Eighteen dodged to the side as one clone attempted to tackle her and then leapfrogged another attempt before kicking a third clone across the face, sending it crashing to the ground. One of the clones that she had avoided, stopped, turned and came at her from behind, but it was hardly an unexpected move and she easily back handed it away. The next move from the clones was less predictable and a ki blast clipped her arm and sent her spinning into the arms of yet another enemy.

She was wearing down quickly now. Her chest had already sustained fairly significant damage when she'd been distracted by her husband's injury, now her arm was burned and no longer seemed to move properly, things were not looking up.

The clone that had caught her began to constrict its arms, slowly crushing her as she struggled to free herself. Her arms were pinned at her sides, all but useless at the moment and her injured chest was buckling under the ever-increasing pressure.

It was becoming impossible to breathe and her vision was slowly growing dark. In desperation, she summoned energy into her good hand and – as soon as it formed – slammed it into her captor's leg. The clone's grip loosened for just a second, but it was all she needed.

Eighteen pushed her arms out, breaking the clone's hold, and then slammed her head back into its face, breaking its nose.

The clone fell back as the android dropped to her knees, clutching her chest as she pulled air into her lungs, one arm hanging limply at her side.

As her breathing slowly returned to normal, she saw two feet appear directly in front of her and she tiredly forced herself to look up at the clone that was now standing over her. For a moment, the clone just stared down at her with a bland expression on her face, but she was sure that some part of the drone was gloating.

In the blink of an eye, the clone's foot lashed out and struck her in the face, sending her bouncing across the ground to another clone which kicked her into the air, where a third clone was waiting to punch her back to the ground. Her body hit the ground with such force that it was imbedded nearly a foot into the sand.

Eighteen's cold, blue eyes stared up at her attackers for a moment and then slowly fluttered shut as unconsciousness prepared to take her, but just before it did, she was almost certain she heard a voice call out…

"Distructo-Disc!"

ooo

Clones were swarming towards Pan from all directions and she was knocking them back the way they came almost as fast as they were coming at her. While she was able to knock them away with ease, she couldn't finish any of them because there was always another two or three attacking her.

She dodged to the right as a clone threw a punch at her, and then drove her elbow into its back as it was passing by, sending it crashing to the ground. The next clone to come was sent spinning away by a roundhouse kick the caught it across the side of the head. The one after that had its hand broken by her powerful grip as she caught a punch it was throwing at her face. Before she could do anything more to that particular clone, however, a ki beam slammed into both of them, sending her tumbling back as the clone she'd been facing fell to the ground, its hair turning black as it dropped.

Two more clones came at her while she was off balance, but their punches and kicks were either avoided or blocked even as she let them drive her backwards. Someone watching might have thought she looked like she was at a disadvantage, but that idea was quickly put to rest as both of her fists came up in simultaneous uppercuts to the clones' jaws. As her opponents' heads arched back in pain, her hands caught them by the hair and drove their faces into her rising knees. Both clones fell as one, their hair also changing as they went down.

Some instinct warned her that an attack was coming from behind and she spun and drove her fist into the chest of a clone that was about to attack her.

Her eyes widened in surprise as her fist hit the black-haired clone's chest with a noise that sounded like "splut" and then kept going. The clone simply stared at her as her hand exploded out of its back, a look of very slight confusion or perhaps surprise on its face.

Pan looked down at where her arm was now imbedded up to her elbow into her opponent, blood, bits of flesh, and some remains of the clone's armor were running over her arm and dripping down to the desert below. She hadn't been able to sense it coming, hadn't known it was one of the ones she had weakened to the point it could no longer hold the Super Saiyan form, instincts had kicked in and she had struck out as hard as possible, more than enough for a killing blow.

Pan's whole body trembled as she watched the life drain out of the clone still stuck on her arm. She couldn't tear her eyes away from it as its head slumped to the side while its eyes remained staring at her. She couldn't hear anything except for the pounding of her heart, she couldn't see anything except of the lifeless eyes of Akira that seemed to stare into her soul, she couldn't feel anything except for the gooey, slippery mess of blood and flesh squishing between her fingers.

As she continued staring at the image of her boyfriend, a level three clone rose up next to her and began powering up a ki attack.

ooo

Akira's moment of victory was cut short, as a fist slammed into the back of his head, sending him tumbling into a kick which rocketed him into the sky where another clone was already waiting for him. The clone grabbed the young warrior by the neck and rained punches down upon his face.

If Akira could have kept his eyes open long enough to see that the clone's vice-like grip on his throat was causing large, red spots to form in his vision or that those red spots were quickly joining together and creating larger black spots, he would have been worried. Unfortunately he couldn't keep his eyes open long enough to witness the phenomenon because the clone's fist kept slamming into his face. He couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, and he was too dazed to try to break free, but for some reason he was able to instinctively execute the single most underhanded and devastating move one could use. A move that Pan had only used once on him (accidentally she claimed), but it had reduced him to a sobbing wretch at the time and still made him cringe even years later.

Akira's knee hit the clone's groin with all the force the young saiyan could muster. The clone released him instantly as every muscle in its body spasmed uncontrollably.

Without a moment of hesitation, Akira cupped his hands at his side, powered up the blast and then called out in a raspy voice, "Sei Kaze!"

The ki beam struck the newly made eunuch in the face, kindly putting it out of its misery.

Akira grabbed his bruised throat and painfully sucked in several deep breaths of precious air while he shook his head from side to side, trying to clear his vision.

It hurt to breathe now, every breath of air he pulled into his body burned his throat felt as if he was inhaling fire. He was fairly certain that was a _bad_ thing, but he didn't really have time to dwell on it as the remaining clones appeared all around him, forcing him to defend himself.

He dodged and blocked all of the attacks he could, but unfortunately the amount he was successfully avoiding and the amount being thrown at him weren't the same number. Still, despite the amount of damage he had and was continuing to take, he wasn't being overwhelmed yet. In fact, he was even finding room to get a few attacks in himself. It didn't happen often, but a few of the clones were clearly weakening and that was something.

And then his nearly nonexistent chances of winning evaporated completely.

Really, he should have known it would happen. The ki blast that had taken out the second, unseen clone should have been the big tip-off, that sort of luck was just too unnatural for it not to catch up with him sooner or later.

Akira saw a foot coming at him form the right and lifted his arm, blocking it right at his elbow. A half-second later, a second clone kicked at him from the left. His left arm was busy trying to keep a punch from connecting with his stomach so he did the only other thing he could, he jerked his head and chest out of the way. Unfortunately, his still raised right arm didn't move in time and the second clone's foot slammed into his bicep at full force. Between the first clone's foot pushing against his elbow and the second clone's foot hitting a little higher up while traveling in the opposite direction, Akira arm couldn't withstand the pressure, not in his weakened state.

The young saiyan's humerus bone snapped like a twig as he screamed in pain and a second later his arm was hanging at his side, completely useless. The fight was over, the rest would just be a formality.

As he struggled to push the pain out of his mind, two clones rose up before him, their fists cocked back.

ooo

Pan blinked as her keen ears heard Akira cry out in pain and her head snapped around just in time to see her boyfriend take several brutal blows to the face and then a ki blast hit him in the chest, he didn't even seem capable of trying to block it anymore. He fell like a stone towards the ground, one arm bending in a place where no joint existed.

Something awoke with in her and she turned back to the clone that was still hanging on the end of her arm, with a flick of her elbow, the clone was sent crashing into a Super Saiyan Three clone that had been powering up a ki attack. Despite the emotion suppressing Super Saiyan Four transformation, Pan was furious. How dare they hurt him?

"Kame Hame Ha!" the beam of blue light exploded out of her palms and struck the level three clone and the corpse she had just flung at it, vaporizing both of them.

Three more clones immediately took their place, but she simply bulled them over as she raced to Akira's aid.

Her boyfriend came close to catching himself before he hit the ground, but the shock from his injury left him dazed and he nearly threw himself face-first into the ground trying to right himself before he crashed into the desert. As it turned out, it didn't matter, Pan was already there to catch him and set him gently down.

His hair became short as he fell out of his level three transformation, his short hair flickered from black to gold for a moment, but finally remained golden as he desperately clung to his regular Super Saiyan form. He fell to his knees and could not seem to find the energy to stand.

"Are you alright?" Pan whispered, her eyes glaring up at the clones who circled overhead, watching the unexpected reunion for the moment.

"I'm… fine…" he lied.

"Yeah, I can tell," Pan said with a grin. "Just relax now, I'll take it from here." She brushed his forehead with a soft kiss and then took to the air, ready to kill those who had hurt her man, regardless of who they looked like.

ooo

The Arlean smiled as he watched the battle unfolding. The saiyans and their friends had put up more of a fight than he'd originally anticipated, but this battle had been long planned and the full force of his army wasn't even on the field yet. In mere moments everything would be complete. The golden furred Akira would regret ever showing him his full power when he fought 02 all those years ago. Had he kept it a secret, had he found a way to win without going all out, things might have been different, but (like all saiyans) it wasn't enough for him just to win, he had to show how completely outclassed his opponent was.

This time it would be he and his friends who were outclassed and overpowered. They would discover that even if Akira had somehow found a way to bring them back even more powerful than they were before, it was all for not.

The Arlean had done more in the last ten years than sit around and watch his children play in the beautiful sunshine of the new Arlean homeworld.

Six new warriors flashed over his head, heralding the immanent defeat of the saiyans as they suddenly vanished. The end of the saiyans had finally arrived.

o

o

**A/N:** 8,700 words later… you are all probably sick of fighting. Well, too bad! Hahahaha! Hopefully, you will all forgive me. Obviously, things are heating up for our heroes and those who are in favor of less Akira/Kanata and more canon characters will be happy to hear that one of them will soon be exiting the fight, even more so than he already has. I also must apologize for the lack of Trunks, Vegeta, and Uubu (Goten too), they'll be back in the next one (this chapter was long enough as is). Sorry about not responding to many of you, I'll try to be better about that with those of you who leaved signed reviews (there needs to be some way to respond to those people who don't have accounts, but alas 'tis not a reality yet). Thanks again for all of the wonderful reviews you leave; they keep me writing even when I really don't want to. Have a Merry Christmas (or a happy holidays for those who don't do Christmas)!


	80. Initial Battles Conclude

**Chapter 80: Initial Battles Conclude**

o

Uubu was now lying in a foot deep Uubu-shaped hole in the ground and still sinking as the clones above him continued to pound on him. The Arlean had done his homework, he'd sent several clones that had to have been fighting at or near Uubu's own power-level, and the young human had foolishly assumed that he was being ignored as usual. Had the result of the compliment the Arlean had paid him not been so painful, Uubu would have been kind of proud to have been seen as enough of a threat to warrant this sort of attention, but at the moment he wasn't too happy about it.

As much as he wanted to just push off the ground, throwing the clones away from his and give them an impressive display of power as his aura exploded around him, that simply wasn't possible at the moment. For one thing, his knee was shot. He'd be lucky if he could push himself off the ground with none of the clones standing over him, with ten or more up there stomping him further into the ground? It wasn't even worth trying. The other problem was that the clones themselves weren't the sort of pushovers who would just let him do such a thing, many of them were probably nearly as strong as he was. Going up was definitely out of the question... but going down was still an option.

The continuous pressure caused by Uubu's body being driven ever deeper into the ground had hardened it considerably, but it wasn't hard enough to give him any trouble as he pushed his arms down into the sand and rock. The young warrior powered up a large, but fairly weak ki blast - not wanting to destroy the planet in his haste to escape for his disadvantageous position - and fired it straight down.

The beam vaporized the ground underneath him and allowed him to fall a short distance from the stomping feet of his enemies.

After training with Goku for many years and having been on the receiving end of more than one sniffed out escape attempt, Uubu knew that just throwing a ball of ki or two down the newly formed tunnel and having them erupt out of the ground while he popped out of a third hole wasn't always as bright of an idea as it sounded. It had never worked against Goku... but he was, without a doubt, a far superior fighter to the opponents Uubu was facing currently. There was a slightly trickier way of using that strategy, however, and that was the tactic Uubu decided on.

He formed the two balls of energy and sent them hurtling down the tunnel a short ways before sending them up through the ground and then he flew straight up out of the original tunnel.

Most of the clones had apparently moved after either the first or the second ball of ki, because they had abandoned the first hole, but two had remained behind... and Uubu was happy to see them. His pink aura glowed brightly as he shot out of the ground, enlarging the hole and pushing the two clones away from him. Ki blasts instantly formed in each hand and he fired at the stumbling clones before they had a chance to recover.

The deadly beams pierced the chest of one, killing it, the other clone managed to partially block the attack, but was sent flying through the air. The moment before it would have crashed into the ground it managed to right itself and land on its feet. The clone's hand flew forward to fire a blast of its own, but Uubu was no longer hovering above the hole he'd flown out of. The Akira double barely had time to look up before the mighty human's fist slammed down on its head, driving it into the ground like a nail.

Another energy attack charged in the Mystical One's hand, but before he could finish off the clone, he felt another clone launch a ki blast at his back. Uubu was in the sky in the blink of an eye, a second later the spot he'd been hovering over exploded, taking the trapped clone with it.

Three enemies appeared before him, their hands and feet already in mid swing. Uubu blocked a punch and a kick, but wasn't quick enough to dodge the fist that crashed into his jaw, sending him tumbling towards the ground.

The young human instinctively righted himself and absorbed the fall by bending his knees as he landed, but his instincts had somehow forgotten that one of his knees was in no condition even support his own weight, much less the force of a four story drop. Uubu's left knee seemed sent bolts of pain shooting through his body as it gave out and he fell awkwardly to the ground. His initial reaction was to reach down and grab at the joint he had further injured, but a ki blast racing down at him from above forced him to short circuit that instinct and put his hands to work firing his own blast to deflect the attack.

Pink met blue with a violent purple explosion that sent both human and clones flying.

ooo

Krillin had barely managed to summon the strength to open his eyes when he saw his wife's limp body hit the ground, but that single sight had brought a surge of rage fueled power flowing through him, driving him to his feet and sending him running towards her.

With his grey hair matted with blood, his formerly-white shirt torn and soiled, and one of his shoes missing he was not the most intimidating of figures, but he charged into battle with reckless abandon.

"Distructo Disc!" he yelled, the razor sharp ki forming in his hand as he rushed forward. As soon as it was formed he launched it and began creating another and then another.

The first clone took a disc to the chest and went down with a shower of blood, alerting the others to the seriousness of the new threat. A second clone twisted away from a disc, but came away with an arm that was attached only by a small amount of skin and partially cut muscle. The third clone easily ducked under the attack aimed for him and hurtled itself towards the former monk.

Krillin barely had time to look surprised before an uppercut lifted him off his feet and left him sprawled on his back on the dusty ground.

The clone coldly lifted one hand as a ki blast powered up in its palm, but the aging human wasn't finished yet. One of his short legs shot out and struck the clone's ankle. It wasn't enough to knock Akira's duplicate off its feet, but the kick did cause the clone to stumble backwards slightly. The momentary lose of balance was all Krillin needed.

In an instant he had pushed himself off the ground and tackled the clone, his fists raining down on it in a blur of motion, driving it deeper and deeper into the ground. He wasn't sure how strong the clone was, but it wasn't a Super Saiyan, so it was possible that he stood some sort of chance against it.

Of course, it didn't really matter whether he stood a chance or not. He wasn't going to go down without a fight no matter what and he certainly wasn't going to let them kill his wife while there was still breath in his body.

Again and again his fists came down on the clone, opening it up in a dozen places all over its face. He brought his arm back, preparing to deliver a killing blow and then his eyes widened in horror as they caught sight of a ki beam bearing down on him. Krillin lifted his arms to protect himself, but the blast tore into him anyway, sending him flying off of the clone and dropping him once again in the dirt, blood running down his chest from a nasty burn.

The short warrior slowly began to rise to his feet, unwilling to give up while his wife was still in danger, but his legs gave out and he fell face first to the ground.

His small, gasping breaths kicked up tiny dirt clouds as he lay there, waiting for the inevitable. He could hear them coming already, the sound of their footsteps was slightly muffled by the sand they were stepping on, but he could still make out their footfalls and what he couldn't hear his imagination readily supplied. It certainly wasn't the way he'd always envisioned going out... actually, he'd figured he'd probably just go in his sleep, dying of old age, since he'd more or less retired from the hero business, but somehow he kept getting pulled back in. After Majin Buu he'd settled into his retirement, but then Baby, Super Android 17, and the Shadow Dragons had appeared. He survived all of that (sort of) and once again thought that the adventures were over, but within a few years Ammit had arrived and now there was this... perhaps he should have been more realistic and realized that his death would be in battle.

He pulled a deep breath into his body and was instantly wracked by a painful coughing fit as the blood that was pooling in his lungs was spat from his mouth. As the coughing eased, he forced himself to look up at his executioners. He would have preferred to have died on his feet, instead of lying on the ground, but at least he could look them in the face as they ended his existence.

The clones stood over him, their empty eyes staring down at him without a hint of pity or hatred. It was unnerving and a part of him was glad that he wouldn't have to look at those eyes for more than a second or two. Without a word, the clones raised their hands and powered up ki beams. Krillin braced himself for the end, knowing that any pain he felt would be over shortly.

Suddenly, a dark shape materialized between himself and the clones. Krillin tried to look up to see what had interrupted his execution, but couldn't seem to get his eyes to focus on this new object. Another fit of coughing hit him and he found that he no longer cared about the interruption or the clones, he just wanted to sleep...

His eyelids dipped lower and then shut as his face fell back into the dirt and he knew no more.

ooo

Vegeta had never been in a fight like the one he was currently struggling in. He'd fought enemies who were stronger than him. He'd fought enemies who held the advantage in numbers. But he'd never fought against enemies that potentially held both categories. The reason, of course, was that he usually fought enemies who were fairly competent fighters, if they were stronger than him, they didn't need the numbers, if they were weaker they did. If he'd been forced to fight Kakarot and his brat, Gohan, after the battle against Cell or Buu when both were stronger, then he would have been overwhelmed in mere moments. If he'd tried fighting all of the Ginyu Force on Namek at the same time, the battle would have been over before it even started. Those opponents would have known what to do with their power advantage, they would have used some sort of strategy against him, they would not have just attacked mindlessly, as the clones were doing now.

Vegeta was well aware of the fact that the only reason he wasn't taking a beating of epic proportions was that his enemies were fighting like idiots, just attacking over and over and waiting for him to be overwhelmed.

That wasn't to say that their pathetic plan wasn't starting to work, it was just taking a lot longer than it would have if someone competent was calling the shots, because Vegeta was definitely beginning to feel the effects of running at 110 percent for as long as he had been. His skill advantage had kept the horde of clones from landing any sort of meaningful blow, but he knew he wouldn't be able to keep it up forever. He couldn't block their attacks all day, but there was so many of them that there was never really a true opening that he could use to deal out some punishment. Sooner or later he would have to attack if he wanted to win, every kick and punch he blocked or dodged took a little more out of him, but didn't do anything to wind his enemies. There was also the horrifying thought in the back of his mind that if he didn't start winning his fight soon, his sons or - even worse - one of Kakarot's offspring would finish off their clones and come to his aid...

He wasn't sure he would survive the humiliation of needing help. It had been a particularly difficult pill to swallow when he'd been forced to ask Krillin's tin can of a wife to help free him from the rubble at the mountain, going through such an experience twice in such a short amount of time might actually kill him.

At the same time, he was not looking forward to what he would have to do in order to begin mounting any sort of an offensive. As he blocked the kicks and punches that seemed to come at him from every direction, he could tell that once he was forced to let those blows connect so he could free up a limb to counterattack he was going to be in a world of hurt. He didn't doubt that he could take the clones... for a while at least, he just wasn't complete sure that his body would be able to hold up under the assault long enough for him to secure a victory.

Well, he thought to himself with a ruthful smile, the life of a warrior, particularly a saiyan warrior, was often filled with uncertainty and it was said that fortune smiled upon the bold.

ooo

The Arlean smiled as six golden streaks passed overhead. At long last, the saiyans and their friends were about to be destroyed once and for all. His little surprise would probably finish the battle very quickly. What a glorious day!

"It is time, 01," the Arlean informed the clone standing next to him with a gleeful voice. "Go and avenge your brother and show Akira what true power is."

"With pleasure, my lord," the clone replied with a grin as a golden aura enveloped it and it shot off towards the Super Saiyan Five.

ooo

"Oh no…" King Kai whispered as his round body shook with fear. "No…"

"What is it King Kai?" Yamcha asked in confusion.

"This battle might be over… and if it is…the Earth is doomed."

"WHAT?" Pan yelled. "What are you talking about? They're winning! No one can touch our Akira and the rest of them are pretty much unstoppable too."

"No," Kumo replied for the kai, "there's something else approaching. The Arlean…" he closed his eyes and focused in on the insectiod, "he's got a plan. Whatever it is, he thinks it's going to end this battle for him and…" Suddenly the youngest of the saiyans got a flash of what the Arlean had planned. "Oh kami," he whispered and then turned back to King Kai, "Can they beat those?"

The kai lowered his eyes, "I don't know. But… I think they might be in trouble."

The rest of the dead Z Fighters look back and forth between Kumo and King Kai in confusion.

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Vegeta demanded.

King Kai indicated his shoulder and said, "Take a look for yourself, it will be starting soon."

ooo

Just as the strange golden objects that had been racing towards the battlefield reached the point where Kanata might have been able to make out what they were, they seemed to vanish. He quickly scanned the sky, searching for them even as the few remaining clones continued to pound away on him to no avail, but he couldn't locate them.

"Ahem," his own voice called out.

Kanata turned and found himself looking at a level four clone. "What do you want, junior?" he asked with a shake of his head. "Hasn't the little bug learned his lesson yet? Super Saiyan Four might have done the job in the past, but I'm afraid you're just outclassed against me."

"We'll just have to see about that, won't we?" the clone shot back.

"I don't know how old you are, but the last time your cockroach of a master tried sending a Super Saiyan Four against me, I turned him into an unrecognizable pile of mush."

"Yes," the clone replied evenly, "I know. I saw that battle."

"Wow, you must have been one of the early models, I'd have thought he would have retired you by now."

"I'm not one of the _early_ models, I am the First."

Kanata's face showed how impressed he was with that piece of information. "Well, I can see why he found the need to try again."

"You're a fool," the clone replied evenly. "Did you think that we didn't prepare for you? Did you think that we didn't monitor that fight? Did you think, when you touched my brother, that we didn't learn exactly how powerful you were?"

Kanata's eyes widened ever so slightly, but he didn't respond.

"That's right," the clone chuckled, "we've been preparing for you for a long time. The Master's generals and I have been waiting for this fight for a long time. But if they want a piece of you, they're going to have to finish off your friends quickly, because you won't last long against one with my power!" Energy began to swirl around the clone and golden bolts of lightening crackled up and down its aura.

Kanata's eyes were now as wide as saucers as the clone began to power up.

ooo

Pan rose slowly into the air, her yellow eyes glancing over each of the clones who had patiently waited for her, apparently realizing that Akira was no longer a threat and could be finished off easily once she was dealt with.

"You just earned yourselves a trip on the express train to the great beyond," she whispered fiercely.

Several clones began powering up ki attacks as she spoke, but she didn't even bother to feign concern.

"I don't know if you're capable of thinking for yourselves, but if you are, I suggest you use those attacks on yourselves. It'll be far more merciful than what I'm going to do to you."

Either they couldn't think for themselves that much or they weren't too worried about her threat because at that moment those that had been charging the attacks launched them while the others moved in for hand to hand combat.

Pan, for possibly the first time in her life, finally understood something her grandfather had once told her about fighting...

_"How did you do that, Grandpa?" a just barely four year old Pan asked in awe as she watched Goku take her father and Uncle Goten with apparent ease despite it being a two on one battle._

_The legendary saiyan warrior smiled and scratched the back of his head good-naturedly as he chuckled and moved to help his two sons out of the ground where he'd planted them. "It's sort of hard to explain, but... sometimes there comes a point where you just... know what you need to do to protect the ones you love... even if it's just a play fight and you aren't actually protecting anyone. Like everything is moving at a certain rhythm and you just know that as long as you stay within the rhythm, you'll always know what your opponents are doing." He smiled, feeling rather proud of himself for the explanation, as he grabbed Goten by the leg and yanked him out of the dirt._

_Pan stared at him in confusion, trying to digest his words as best she could before finally giving up and saying, "Huh?"_

_Goku's face fell, he'd really thought that was a pretty good way of explaining it, but apparently she was just too little to understand. "I tell you what, you just keep up your training and I'll explain it again when you're a little older, okay?"_

_It wasn't really okay, but she nodded anyway, assuming that he'd tell her after the upcoming Tenkaichi Budoukia. _

Of course, it was at that tournament that Goku had met Uubu and left to train him, spending far less time with his family than he normally would have, and then there was the trouble with the blackstar dragonballs after that, and then Super 17 and the Shadow Dragons, and then he was gone, but it didn't matter anymore. Pan finally completely understood what he was talking about.

She swatted away a ki blast, twisted to the side as two more slipped past her and then ducked under a kick from a clone. As she rose again, her hand shot out and slapped aside a punch from another clone and then balled into a fist and slammed into that clone's face, sending it tumbling away. There was no need to watch the clone fall; she knew just where it was going.

Two more clones came at her and she easily avoided their rapid fire punches and kicks while she maneuvered them into position and then, with the greatest of ease, she grabbed one's fist and pulled him in front of the other while slipping his sword out of its sheath. She spun and drove the blade into an approaching clone's chest, stealing its sword as it fell away and then flung the newly acquired weapon into the back of the clone she had pulled. The blade pierced not only that clone's back, but also impaled the second clone that had been attacking her earlier.

It all seemed to happen in the blink of an eye, but for Pan everything had slowed down to a snails pace.

A new clone came at her from behind, wrapping its arms around her to hold her steady while its brothers took their shots at her, but her head snapped back into its face and her arms broke free from the hold almost instantly. Her right hand reached behind her and latched onto the clone's hair, using that to pull it over her shoulder, just in time to take two ki blasts to the chest as she grabbed its sword before throwing the body to the ground.

The sword did not slide nicely out of the scabbard as she'd planned, the cover for the blade was simply torn away from the armor, but as it turned out, that worked even better than her original idea. Without stopping to think things through, Pan flicked the sword in the direction of one of the clones who had launched a ki beam at her; the scabbard flew off the blade like a missile, striking the clone squarely in the face. The clone fell from the sky almost instantly, the scabbard still imbedded in its forehead.

Pan sidestepped a punch and then turned to drive her sword into the new clone's belly, but the fur covered clone dodged her stab and slapped the weapon out of her hand.

The powerful female warrior's eyes widened in shock as the clone grinned evilly at her.

"Hello girlie," he snickered, "I hope you don't mind if I join in the fun."

Had she the time or the presence of mind to do so, Pan would have probably come up with a biting retort, but she didn't have the time and any presence of mind that she had was quickly delegated towards dealing with the pain racing through her head as the clone's fist smashed into her face and sent her careening into several large rock formations on the desert floor below.

ooo

Trunks' beautiful blade slipped smoothly across the stomach of a clone, stopped just as it slipped out of the clone's body, and then came back at head level. The clone came apart in a shower of blood as its body was divided into three parts.

Trunks didn't even see it fall, he was already heading for his next victim.

The next clone's sword rose to parry the Super Saiyan's initial strike, but its sword shattered under the impact and Trunks' blade kept going. The clone was split into perfectly symmetrical halves.

Trunks turned to find another enemy, but was immediately struck in the face by a ki beam. The attack wouldn't normally have been enough to injure him in his current form, but it made up for its lack of power by striking him in the eyes, temporarily blinding him. Three more energy waves slammed into him, driving him to the ground and leaving him slightly dazed and still blinded.

As he pulled himself shakily out of the hole his landing had created, he rubbed his eyes hard with his non-sword bearing hand, trying to clear his vision.

He experimented with partially opening one eye, flinched at the stinging daylight and quickly closed his eye again it began to tear up, cursing the luck of the clone that had managed to hit him at the only spot on his body where he was even remotely vulnerable in this fight.

Before he could begin to think of how he was going to find the time to get his eyes functioning again, a fist or foot struck him across the face, knocking him to his knees and then something struck him in the chest, sending him bouncing along the desert floor.

With the smoothness that only years of training with his father could have produced, Trunks rolled in the air after one of his skips off the hard ground, got his feet under him and slid to a stop. Again his hand was quickly at his eyes again, working furiously at restoring his sight. Of course, there was the chance that wiping at them wouldn't do anything to help him, but he didn't have any other options at the moment and instinct dictated that this was the best policy.

Again he tried opening them, and was rewarded by significantly less pain than his first experiment had yielded, but tears still sprang instantly to his eyes, further blurring images that were far from clear to begin with. He was able to dimly make out the shape of a clone landing before him and attacking, but couldn't judge what the blow was aimed at and was unable to completely dodge out of the way.

Again he wiped at his eyes, pushing the tears away and turned back to the clone that had been joined by a second and a third. They were out of focus, but Trunks could see enough to put up a bit of a fight now. He tried bringing his sword up, but his hand was kicked hard before he was ready for it and the sword slipped from his grasp.

He jerked his head to the left as a fist shot towards him, but was not quick enough to twist out of the way a second time and a foot caught him in the ribs. Trunks grunted as the blow struck and guessed that it must have come from the level three clone, because the others should not have been able to hurt him that much.

With that knowledge in mind, he focused in on that clone and ignored the others for the most part. Their attacks hurt a bit and could knock him off balance, so he had to pay them some mind, but they weren't likely to be able to do the kind of damage that the level three clone could.

For nearly a full minute Trunks dodged the more dangerous clone's attacks and avoided or blocked those he could from the other two while his eyes continued to recover from the lucky ki blast. More clones joined in the fray, but even with the addition of a second level three clone, Trunks was managing to keep himself from being overwhelmed.

Clones that had started off as indistinct blobs of gold, silver, and flesh tones, were gradually becoming identifiable as beings possessing arms, legs, and golden hair. The sunlight still stung his eyes, but even that was becoming tolerable either because he'd grown used to the pain or because his eyes were recovering. As his eyesight improved, so did his fighting. He'd taken a lot of damage while he was blinded and his power level had decreased far more than it should have in a fight where he was so much more powerful than his enemies, but he didn't think it was anything to be concerned about. Even with the loss of power, he was certain he was still much stronger than the clones.

Suddenly, something stung his side just as he was dodging a punch. The mighty Super Saiyan felt his flesh split apart and blood begin running from his body, he looked down at the injury and squinted to bring it into focus. One of the Super Saiyan Three clones had managed to clip him with a sword, the wound wasn't bad because of the difference in his and the clone's power level, but the fact remained that the higher level clones could cut him. A quick glance up revealed that the other level three clone was also switching to armed combat.

Trunks dodged to the side as the razor sharp point of the blade lashed out at him, but had his feet taken out from under him by a weaker clone's kick.

The lavender haired Super Saiyan Four went down hard and immediately found himself forced to fend off attacks as the clones kept coming.

A foot cracked the ground next to Trunks' head as he twisted out of the way, only to get kicked in the stomach as he tried to roll away. He punched at the nearest clone, sending it flying, but was struck across the face by the clone that took that one's place. As he attempted to dodge another kick coming towards his head, his teared-up eyes spotted the glint of sunlight reflecting off a sword blade. He forced away the last remnants of pain from his eyes light sensitivity and focused on the blade as it raced towards his exposed chest.

Trunks' hand shot in front of him and caught the blade, a thin rivulet of blood trickled from his clenched fist onto his dark red fur, but the tip of the sword remained a hair's breadth from his chest and moved no closer.

In one, quick move, he brought his leg up and kicked the clone away, leaving him in sole possession of the sword and then pushed himself to his feet.

Trunks could feel anger seeping into his body, despite the emotional dampening of the Super Saiyan Four transformation. He expertly flipped the sword around so he was holding it by the handle in his uninjured hand and then shook the one that had caught the blade, splashing the ground with red blood.

For a moment the clones seemed to hesitate, but then the lower level ones attacked. Trunks was a blur of moment, his newly commandeered sword whistling through the air with a sureness that could only be executed by a true master.

The mini-battle took only a few, short seconds.

As Trunks' blade came to a rest, the clones that had surrounded him froze in their places and then fell to pieces - literally - leaving Trunks ankle deep in blood and body parts, his blue eyes blazing with battle lust.

The two remaining clones, both Super Saiyan Threes, attacked instantly. The one still in possession of its weapon charging forward to engage the sword master in close quarters, while the weaponless clone attacked from a distance, firing a ki beam at the saiyan.

As beam and clone both bore down on him, Trunks' whole body seemed to relax, his sword drooping to his side. As the clone brought the blade of its sword down on him and the ki beam drew near, he sprang into motion. His own sword rose instantly and knocked the first clone's blade away while he spun and kicked the fighter into the sky. Completing the spin, he slapped away the ki beam with a look of contempt and then drew his sword hand back and hurled the blade at the remaining clone.

The brand spun end over end so fast it appeared to be a glittering disc, until it imbedded itself up the hilt in the chest of the clone with so much force that it sent the dying Akira-replica flying across the desert floor.

Trunks didn't bother watching his handiwork past seeing the sword hit its mark; he had other matters to attend to. The moment the projectile finished off the second clone; Trunks glanced over his shoulder and then turned and slapped his hands together above his head, smoothly trapping the sword of the first clone as it brought its weapon down on him.

A quick jerk of his hands pulled the sword from the clone's grasp and in one quick move, Trunks spun and drove the tip of the blade up through his enemy's jaw and out through the top of its head. Trunks waited while the clone's body twitched a few times while dangling from the sword still in his grasp and then he dropped both the sword and the corpse to the ground.

He looked down at it for a moment and then walked to where his sword had fallen after it had been kicked from his grasp.

As Trunks bent down to retrieve his weapon, he heard something land behind him. His hand tightened around the handle and then he rose and spun, his blade cutting through the air at head level. With a loud clanging of metal, sword struck sword with equal power, neither giving any ground under the impact.

Trunks' eyes widened as he gazed upon the level four warrior before him.

"I hope those weaklings gave you a good warm up," the new clone chuckled, "because the real fight is about to start."

ooo

One of the clones sent flying by the explosion slammed into an enormous wedge shaped boulder, bending at an unnatural angle against the hard stone surface and did not rise again. The rest were more fortunate and either landed on their feet or were able to quickly stand back up.

Uubu was no where to be seen.

The clone's heads moved in unison as they scanned the battlefield and then they began walking towards a large pile of rubble. Before they reached it, the rocks shifted slightly and then began to glow with an eerie pink light before rising into the air as the young human warrior stood, one leg clearly bearing all of his weight.

The small boulders being held in the air by the aura surrounding the Mystical One began to revolve around him, like planets in a bizarre solar system. Faster and faster they swirled until they seemed to form a stone cocoon around him, completely hiding him from view. And then, as a cry of exertion came from the center or the cocoon, the rocks shot away from him at alarming speeds.

The clones, who had been preparing to attack him, were caught off guard as the stone projectiles hurtled towards them. The boulders - even at the speeds they were traveling - weren't enough to kill any of the clones, but they could injure their intended victims, plus, they were one hell of a distraction.

Even as the rocks began to slam into the clones, knocking some to the ground, forcing others to raise their arms and defend themselves, Uubu was already in the air. His fists slammed into one clone three times in quick succession and then his good foot caught the Akira-duplicate in the face, sending it spinning into the ground. Without even looking down at his enemy, Uubu threw a ball of ki at it and then charged after the remaining clones. On the desert floor, unseen by the rest of the combatants, Uubu's attack ended the clone's life.

Uubu managed to land several more attacks on the next clone he came upon, but before he could kill it, two more dropped from the sky kicking him in the back and elbowing him in the head almost simultaneously. The Mystical One crashed to the ground once more.

Even as he hit the ground, Uubu rolled and threw his hand up at the clones as what looked like arrows of golden light shot from his finger tips. Two clones were pierced through the chest by the attack, but the rest dodged to the side, only to have the arrows double back and slice through their group once again before spiraling up into a golden cyclone. Only one clone was caught the second time, but that still brought the odds down to four on one.

"I hope you're ready for this," the mohawked warrior grinned as his attack spun faster and faster, "because this fight is OVER!"

The swirling ki arrows condensed into one and flew towards the remaining clones who didn't even have time to think about moving. Two clones were struck dead on by the ki arrow and were incinerated instantly. The other two were knocked from the air by the resulting explosion, both lost their Super Saiyan form as they hit the ground.

Uubu let his hands fall to his sides as a ball of pink ki formed in each one of them. He'd done it. He'd won. His leg was throbbing, his body ached from dozens of bruises and cuts, and he had been opened up in more than a dozen places, and his power had been severely sapped by that last attack, but he was the victor.

"Goodbye."

The two balls of ki slipped out of his hands and almost casually drifted towards the bodies of the final two clones, but before it hit its mark, the two clones' bodies vanished. Uubu looked up in confusion as a new clone seemed to appear out of thin air, holding the two limp bodies.

"You'll pay for daring to touch one of my Master's warriors with your life," the clone promised as its yellow eyes seemed to glow.

Uubu was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was nowhere near strong enough to stand up against a Super Saiyan Four opponent for any length of time, unfortunately, he didn't have a choice.

ooo

Gohan looked down at Krillin's prone, blood-soaked body and then turned his glare towards the clones that had hurt his oldest friend. The air sizzled with power as the Super Saiyan Four's muscles tensed, ready to strike at any moment.

"I know your actions aren't really in your hands, but you hurt my friend and will keep trying to hurt him unless you're stopped," he growled. "You might not have any freewill, but I can't forgive you for what you've done!"

The saiyan's hands glowed as golden ki flowed into his palms, instantly forming into spheres, and then he launched them at his enemies. The dark haired clones that had been attacking Krillin as well as Super Saiyan clones that had followed him from his earlier fight scattered as the energy balls hit the ground where they'd been standing and exploded, kicking dust and smoke up into the air. The blank eyes of the Akira duplicates immediately began to search for the saiyan so they could begin their counterattack, but he had vanished in the confusion of the initial attack.

Suddenly the smoke seemed to swirl a little and then Gohan shot out of it, grabbed a clone and pulled him back inside. There was a loud ripping sound and a moment later a bloody corpse dropped out of the dark cloud and crashed into the desert floor.

The remaining clones instantly turned to the cloud and began firing ki blast after ki blast into it, piercing the smoke and dust from every conceivable angle. For the briefest of seconds, nothing happened, no body fell, no retaliation came. The only movement on the battle field came from the shifting of the particles in the cloud.

And then, without warning, Gohan shot from the cloud into the nearest cluster of clones. He kicked the first on in the chest, flipped over the head of another and fired a ki blast into its back. A third clone came at him from behind, throwing a punch that passed through the saiyan warrior's head as the after-image began to fade away. The clone turned just in time to see Gohan's hand rising up to catch it under the chin. With a loud crack, the clone's neck snapped under the incredible force of the blow.

Gohan watched the body fall towards the ground for a second and then fired a ki blast that pierced its chest, assuring its death... after all, it wasn't unheard of to recover from a broken neck in the middle of a battle.

His initial enemies dealt with, Gohan's yellow eyes began to search for more clones he could deal with.

It didn't take him long to spot them, they were charging right at him. With a small grin Gohan raced towards them.

The first was kicked towards the ground, removing it from his immediate concern so he could turn and focus on the others. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied one approaching from behind and spun at just the right moment to take it by surprise. His fist sliced through the air...

... and suddenly came to a screeching halt as a powerful hand wrapped around it.

Gohan's eyes followed the fur covered arm that was attached to the hand all the way up to the face of the clone that was smiling almost happily at him.

"Now, now, I can't have you hurting my brothers any more. Your fight is with me!"

ooo

Goten stared with unblinking yellow eyes at the clones that surrounded him. His fight with them had been raging for several minutes, but it had only lasted that long because he hadn't bothered really trying very hard against them yet. The two level three clones in their midst were capable of hurting him – somewhat – but so far all they'd managed to do was give him a few minor cuts and burns.

With a small smile, he charged towards the clones, fists and feet flying, somehow appearing to be everywhere at once. One of the Super Saiyan Three clones managed to dodge two of his punches, but his knee still found a way to slam into the clones stomach, doubling it over so he could drive both of his fists into the back of its head, sending it crashing to the ground. Before he could finish it off, however, a ki blast exploded against his back, sending him tumbling end over end into the ground.

Goten hit the dirt hard, but was on his feet almost instantly, as a lower level clone tried to land a kick where he'd been lying. With a quick sweep of his leg, Goten took the clone's feet out from under it and then kicked it in the face before it managed to hit the ground. The clone's head snapped back farther than its spine was supposed to allow and it did not move when its body hit the sandy desert floor.

A second clone came at him from the side, but Goten sidestepped its attack and caught it by the throat. He started to squeeze the life out of it, but was distracted by a foot nearly striking his face, without hesitating, he swung the trapped clone around and threw it into its brother. A ki blast later, the two clones had matching holes through their chests.

As he turned to face the remaining clones, one of the level threes appeared in front of him, enormous ki blast already charged in its palms. Goten didn't even have a chance to get his hands up before the attack exploded against his chest.

The explosion sent him flying into the air where the waiting clones pounced on him, striking him from every possible angle. The ki attack had dazed him just slightly, leaving him open to their attacks for the first time since the fight began.

One clone drove its knee into the young saiyan's back and then another brought a ball of ki down upon his head. Goten was hurtled from the sky and into the desert floor with an explosion of sand and rocks.

For a moment he lay still, and then golden light enveloped him incinerating the ground below and around him. His yellow eyes snapped open as his body righted itself.

"If that's all you've got, this fight is already over," he promised them.

In a heartbeat he was in the air, his fists and feet pumping at incredible speeds, sending clones flying in all directions. One took a particularly brutal shot to the back and was bent in half with a sickening crunch. A second clone's chest caved in under the force of the blow that struck it.

At the pace he was eliminating them, the cluster of clones would have been finished off in a matter of moments, but he was already too late.

As he moved in for the kill on yet another clone, a powerful kick seemed to come out of nowhere, sending him plowing into the dirt. Once again it took Goten lay still for a moment after his body finally came to a rest, but then, with a shake of his head, he pushed himself up to his knees and opened his eyes, only to find himself staring at a pair of boots with a dark red tail swishing just behind him.

Goten looked up.

"Hello son of Goku," the level four clone grinned. "Are you ready to die?" Its foot shot out and caught him under the chin, sending him flying through the air.

ooo

Vegeta waited for his moment patiently, his head bobbing and weaving around the punches flying at it while his arms and legs worked furiously to block anything he couldn't dodge.

And then he saw it. A kick, coming right at his waist, but either the clone was a bit off balance or else it just didn't have its heart in that particular attack because it wasn't as hard of a blow as it should have been.

Vegeta allowed it to score a hit, and then his right arm immediately latched onto the foot and held it firmly, practically ignoring the punches and kicks that were suddenly smashing into his body. With a grunt of exertion, the Saiyan Prince's left knee rose into the clone's gut, nearly turning it inside out.

The clone went limp for a moment and Vegeta instantly swung its body around in a circle, giving him a bit of space so he could launch the clone into the ground, firing a ki blast after it.

The rest of the clones had seemed confused by Vegeta's sudden change in tactics, but they quickly restarted their attack with renewed vigor. Fists came high, legs swept low, ki blasts sizzled through the air, but the Saiyan Prince no longer bothered blocking any but the most dangerous attacks. His defense consisted of making sure that the attacks that landed did not do so completely on target. All of his energy was now being spent on hurting anything within range that moved.

Two balls of ki formed in Vegeta's hands, but he didn't even bother throwing them, he simply slammed them into the faces of the nearest two clones, even as he was kicked in the back and elbowed in the face. The two clones were sent tumbling end over end by the resulting explosions and Vegeta's gloves were burnt off of his hands, exposing freshly blistered skin.

A fist whistled through the air, coming at Vegeta from his blind-side, but the Saiyan Prince simply tilted his head to the side and the fist was barely able to graze his hair. Vegeta's hand shot up, caught the clone by the wrist, and then pulled down sharply, snapping the clone's arm at the elbow over his muscular shoulder. With a feral grin the Prince spun and kicked the clone in the chest, sending it flying.

Two more clones came at him from either side before he could finish off the injured clone, one catching him in the stomach with an unexpected kick while the other drove its fists into the back of his head. Vegeta went down hard, but was on his feet again in an instant, blood running down the side of his face.

For a moment, clones and saiyan stared at each other, and then golden auras surrounded the Akira duplicates as they pushed their power levels even higher. Vegeta glared at them, knowing that things were about to get worse for him.

"Come on then," he growled, "let's see what you've got!"

Both hands glowed as he powered up ki blasts and then began launching them rapid fire at the clones as they charged forward. The clones dodged from side to side as they closed in on the saiyan, but before they could reach him, Vegeta vanished.

The clones likewise disappeared and for the next couple of seconds, the air was thick with the sounds of the invisible battle that raged across the desert.

Suddenly, there was a loud crack and a golden object slammed into the ground.

Overhead the clones reappeared one by one, hovering above the large cloud of dust that was rolling into the sky from Vegeta's landing. It took the Saiyan Prince a noticeably longer amount of time to pull himself to his feet again and once he was finally up, he seemed unsteady on his feet. Vegeta's chest trembled as he pulled air into his tired body; blood dripped off of his chin from several cuts on his face while a thin rivulet ran down his arm. One of his arms was hanging almost limply at his side, having taken a ki blast and several physical attacks during the lightening fast battle.

The Prince hung his head in defeat. "There are just too many of them," he whispered.

Perhaps sensing that the battle was nearly in hand, two clones charged forward, one raising his fist, the other pulling his sword from its scabbard.

In the blink of an eye, Vegeta's breathing slowed, his body straightened and his 'limp' arm flexed. With a small smirk, he twisted away from the punch and caught the blade of the sword as it came down on his head. Golden ki blazed around him as he twisted the sword to the side, snapping it in two. His foot shot up and caught the sword wielding clone in the face, flipping it in the air while he threw the broken piece of sword into the back of the first clone. A ki blast formed in his hands and then flew into the second clones face as it completed its flip, killing it instantly.

"You didn't honestly think I'd go down that easily, did you?" he asked the four remaining clones. "I am the Prince of all Saiyans, pathetic little abominations like you don't stand a chance against me, even if you out number me."

His proclamation was met with a loud burst of familiar laughter from behind him. The saiyan spun around and found himself looking into the yellow eyes of his adopted son's Super Saiyan Four form.

"Are you so certain of your superiority, Prince Vegeta?" Akira's voice asked mockingly.

Vegeta took a shocked step back and then – the second he realized what he had done – dropped into his fighting stance. "Another abomination for me to destroy, huh? Well bring it on!"

The level four clone grinned. "Gladly."

o

o

**A/N:** Ugh, I've gotten so bad at updating… I used to be so good too, way back when… I'd update at least once a week, now it seems like a struggle (a losing struggle, I might add) just to get a chapter out every three weeks. I didn't proofread this chapter very closely outside of while I was writing it, it's sixteen pages long in MSWord and I just don't have it in me, so I apologize for any misspelling. Someday I'll go back through and fix all those stupid errors that I find whenever I reread one of my earlier chapters, but until then you'll just have to live with an apology. There usually aren't too many mistakes, so hopefully it won't be too distracting. Maybe the next chapter will just be all about Kumo (little one, not dead one) playing outside or something… 'cause I'm sick of writing fight scenes, but sadly I still have quite a bit more fighting left. Still, I think there are only about four more chapters left, five max. I usually suck at predicting how much longer the story will be, but as I have it mapped out in my head, five chapters tops. We'll see. I guess if I do an all Kumo chapter (which I was only joking about… mostly) then there might be six, but that would be the absolute most there could be. Anyway, please review and let me know what you thought. Sorry against about the wait, I'm trying to be better, but it just hasn't been in the cards lately.


	81. Clash of the Super Powers Part I

**Chapter 81: Clash of the Super Powers Part I**

o

As Vegeta stared into the cold, cruel, yellow eyes of the Akira clone, he completely understood why his counterpart from Kanata's timeline had assumed that Akira had gone off the deep end and started killing people. Unlike the weaker clones, with their emotionless, empty eyes, there was nothing about the clone's appearance to separate it from Akira.

"So," the Prince scowled, "this is why the Arlean wasn't worried when we started taking apart his little army."

The clone grinned, but did not reply.

Vegeta opened his mouth to offer a taunt, but only managed to spit a spray of blood into the face of the clone that had suddenly appeared right in front of him as pain erupted from his stomach. His eyes bulged under the unexpected pressure against his diaphragm and then they slowly made their way down to where he could see a powerful fist partially imbedded into his abdomen.

The clone's grin grew a little wider as he removed his arm and watched the results of his attack.

Vegeta clutched his injured stomach and tried to turn away from his enemy as he took a staggering step back. His body was in so much pain his brain couldn't properly control his limbs any more and he tripped and fell to his knees.

"Tsk, tsk," the clone whispered as he stepped closer to the saiyan, "already beaten? I must say I'm not very impressed. The way the Master tells it, you're about as badass as they come. I guess that's only when you're fighting those who are weaker than you, isn't it, monkey?"

Vegeta was too busy trying to breath to bother replying.

With a grunt of contempt, the clone backhanded the Saiyan Prince away, sending him tumbling through the dirt like a rag doll. "You're pathetic," it spat. "You and your whole race are nothing but a bunch of savage thugs. The universe will rejoice when your kind is finally been exterminated."

A large, purple bruise was already forming on the side of Vegeta's face, as blood ran into his eye from a freshly opened cut, but he somehow found the strength to rise to his feet. He still didn't bother to respond to the clone, but his eyes burned with hatred as he glared at his foe.

For a moment the two just stared at each other, a faint breeze rolled grains of sand across the desert floor and rustled Vegeta's long, blonde hair, but other than that, no one moved, not even the four remaining clones that hovered silently above the battle – all but forgotten.

And then the level four clone was in front of the injured saiyan, its fist already swinging up at him. Vegeta didn't have a chance to blink before he was lifted off the ground by the powerful uppercut. The saiyan's body shot skyward, and was met once again by the clone who drove its knee into his gut, doubling him over, before bringing an elbow down on his back sending him crashing to the ground.

Again Vegeta slowly rose to his feet, only to find that the clone was once again waiting for him. Its fists lashed out again and again, snapping his head back and forth painfully with each blow, and then grabbed him by the face, lifted him into the air and slammed him into the ground, cracking the hard desert floor in a dozen directions.

"Is that it?" Vegeta managed to wheeze from the ground as blood flowed down his face and out of his mouth. "Clearly you only look like a saiyan, if our rolls were reversed, I would have killed you a long time ago."

"Shut up, weakling!" the clone snarled. "It's only because my Master wants you to suffer that you've been allowed to remain alive this long, if I had my way, you and your kind would be as dead as the nameks were when I was through with them."

"I guess that makes you pretty tough, huh? Killing a bunch of farmers? You and the little bug are definitely better than the saiyans," Vegeta chuckled. "It must be nice to still think you're so innocent."

The clone reached into the ground, and pulled Vegeta out by his golden hair. "The Master learned his leason after dealing with people like you: There's no such thing as innocence. Every living being in the universe survives only by killing others. Some, like my Master, are more pure than others, better suited to govern the masses; they try to make the universe a better place, even if it means making some sacrifices. Others, like you monkeys, are simply a plague that needs to be wiped from existence."

Vegeta's chuckle became a wet, mocking laugh. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

The clone's face twisted with rage and he pulled the saiyan closer and then proceeded to head-butt him several times, but Vegeta's laughter continued until the clone drove him face first back into the ground.

ooo

With a groan and a slow shake of her head, Pan pushed away the pile of rocks she was lying under and climbed to her feet. Her head was killing her, she couldn't even remember the last time someone had hit her as hard as the Super Saiyan 4 clone just had, it certainly hadn't happened since the Shadow Dragon's were defeated.

"Well, I'm glad to see that the information we had on you was fairly accurate, even if it didn't mention your ability to reach this form," the clone chuckled as he gently landed just in front of her. "And here I just watched the recordings of your death for the fun of it, who would have thought it would actually come in handy one day?"

Pan glared at him, but didn't bother responding. Her golden aura began to rise off of her like wisps of steam.

"Yes, quick to anger, thinks herself a better fighter than she is, easily killed... I think that about sums up everything I need to know about you."

"You're about to find that you don't know as much as you think," she growled as she shot forward.

The clone ducked under her initial strike and then twisted to the side to avoid an axe kick which cracked the ground where he'd been standing.

Pan's next move was to loose the ki blast that had been charging in her hand, waiting for the right moment to be unleashed. The blast flew straight and true, the clone barely had time to do anything but bring his hand up in front of his face... and vanish the second his fingers touched his forehead.

The female Super Saiyan's mouth fell open, only her grandfather and Akira knew that move.

"You're right, the Master's info on you is definitely misleading," the clone chuckled from behind her, "He gave you far too much credit."

"H, how did you do that?" she demanded, trying to hide her growing sense of fear.

"Surely you didn't think that the Yardratians were only known by Goku, did you?" the clone smirked at her foolishness. "They were a weak race, easily tracked down and easily broken for their information. My Master created us clones yet, if he'd had us with him, it would have been even quicker, but the slaves that remained with him after the revolt were more than adequate to get what he needed out of the pink skins."

"So he hurt even more people who'd never done anything to him, just so he could get his revenge against Vegeta?" Pan growled. "What a pathetic coward!"

The slap to the side of her face came so suddenly that she didn't even have time to brace herself before it drove her to the ground.

"You will never speak that way about the Master!" the clone raged. "A monkey like you could never possibly grasp his vision. Some sacrifices had to be made, but he is building an utopia, the deaths of those who were in the way were for the greater good."

Pan spat out the blood that was pooling in her mouth and climbed back to her feet. "No one has a right to do what he's done to the people of this planet or any other. The only death that'll be for the greater good will be his!"

The clone attacked again, but this time the young warrior was ready and its punch passed harmlessly over her shoulder as she dipped low and then brought her fist up into its face, lifting it off the ground. Pan wasted no time in flying after it and a second later the two were battling across the desert sky.

ooo

Uubu knew it was basically a pointless battle, outside of the fact that if he lost he was going to die, but he also knew he didn't have much choice in the matter. The red furred clone in front of him wasn't going to just let him walk away saying he knew he wasn't strong enough to beat it.

As the two watched each other the level four clone grinned. "It looks like 02 didn't bury you deep enough. I'll have to fix that."

"You can try," Uubu replied in his most assured voice, recalling Goku's instruction to never confirm a stronger opponent's assumption about your own strength, "but I doubt you'll have much better luck."

"I've seen what he did to you, I won't _need_ any more luck than he had," the clone taunted back. "By the way, did you get to see what he did to your little saiyan bitch after he was through with you? _That_ was an inspired piece of work! Too bad she's not around this time... did you just leave her in hell or is she hiding somewhere?"

Uubu wasn't completely sure what the clone was getting at, but he could guess. "She's perfectly safe, and you bastards will never get a chance to touch her."

"Big words, for a little human, let's see if you can back them up," the clone licked his lips in anticipation as he shifted his body into a fighting stance.

Uubu did his best to follow suit, though his knee injury kept him from doing so very well. He was going to die in this battle, and he knew it. He hoped Bra would understand, he was Goku's student, he had to come to this timeline to fight against the clones, it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately it looked like it was also going to be the last thing he'd ever do, and that meant he would never see her again... or at least not the version of her from his timeline.

The clone suddenly seemed to vanish and all thoughts of Bra were driven from Uubu's mind by the impact of the clone's elbow against his face which sent the human warrior plowing through the desert floor.

For a long time Uubu remained perfectly still, face down in the dirt, the only trace of moment was the rustling of his black hair in the breeze. And then his body twitched and he lifted his head just enough to dimly make out the clone's boots only inches from his face. The young human's unfocused eyes continued moving up Akira's duplicate's body until they reached the clone's sneering face.

"Pathetic weakling," it growled. "You talk big, but you've got nothing to back it up with."

Uubu slowly pushed himself into a kneeling position, ignoring the clone for the moment as he tried to clear his head. It was almost funny really, how much time the clone was spending taunting him. If it would shut up for a moment and do what it had no doubt been instructed to do, he'd already be dead. Apparently Akira's battle arrogance was a genetic trait. Despite the situation and the fact that he was going to die very, very soon, Uubu began to laugh.

"What's so funny?" the clone demanded, clearly caught off guard by the laughter.

"You," Uubu replied. "You think you're so powerful, that I'm some pathetic weakling, but none of that power is really yours. The Arlean stole it, just like he stole this planet... nothing he has right now came from his own work, a saiyan's blood gave it to him. And you? Even if you are a sadistic bastard, I can still see some of Akira inside you. You two are probably more similar than you'd li—"

He didn't get a chance to finish explaining his joke as the clone's foot connected solidly with his face, punting him into the air where the clone was already waiting for him only to slam him back into the ground.

Once again Uubu lay face down in the dirt, unmoving.

The clone landed next to the small crater and let out a laugh of his own, "Still think I'm funny?"

Uubu's only reply was a small groan as the clone lifted him off the ground by his hair and then threw him aside like a piece of trash.

ooo

In his weakened state, Akira couldn't follow either Pan or the clone's movements, but he could see and hear the results of their clashes as every few seconds a rock formation would crumble or the ground would suddenly erupt as a body slammed into it. There was no way to know which body was hitting the ground, because who ever it was simply shot out of the newly formed holes like a golden comet and vanished as the battle resumed.

He prayed to Dende – momentarily forgetting that the kami was no longer living in this reality – that Pan was holding her own against her opponent, but he feared his prayers were in vain. It wasn't that he didn't think she could win, but she'd been fighting not only her own group of clones, but his as well, and that would have used up some of her precious energy before the Super Saiyan Four clone even showed up. There was also the fact that she was a brand new Super Saiyan Four and hadn't come by the power naturally either, Akira wasn't sure if that would result in her being weaker than a saiyan who could achieve the feat on his own, but he doubted it was going to make her stronger. Vegeta had once admitted – through gritted teeth, of course – that he was weaker than Goku when they were both Super Saiyan Fours, so it was possible, perhaps even likely, that Pan would suffer the same handicap as well.

The young warrior glanced down at his broken arm and cursed his weakness. If he'd been stronger, more prepared, he wouldn't have needed her help against the clones and might have even been able to help her during this battle. At the very least he might have been able to donate some of his power to her, as he had with his older self, perhaps that would have been enough to swing the odds completely in her favor.

As it was, the only thing he could do was stare into the sky where he knew she was fighting and prepare himself to help her if she needed it and the opportunity presented itself.

ooo

The clone smiled at the silence of the Saiyan Prince as he pulled Vegeta's limp body from the ground, watching with amusement as dirt and blood fell from the saiyan's hair and face.

"It's not so funny anymore, is it, little prince?" the clone smirked as he tossed Vegeta aside with contempt. "I think, perhaps it's time for me to end th—"

"Heh heh heh," Vegeta's body began to shake with his chuckles. "You think you've got what it takes to finish me?" The saiyan slowly rose to his feet, his arms hung limply from his body and his legs looked as though they barely had the strength to hold his weight, but he stood and looked the clone in the eyes with a confident, bloody smile. "Kakarot is the only one I'd ever give that honor to and even he wouldn't find it particularly easy. But at least he came about his power legitimately, you cheap knockoff."

The clone snarled and charged forward, driving his fist into the Saiyan Prince's stomach with some much force it almost seemed to come out the other side. Vegeta doubled over and the clone spun and kicked him across the face, sending him bouncing along the desert floor.

Vegeta came to a rest against a rock and then once again climbed to his feet. "H… how sad," he whispered, "You couldn't e… even steal Akira's powers right… h, he's ten times the warrior you'll ever be… and he's got nothing on Kakarot."

"Why do you keep talking?" the clone demanded.

"B, because," Vegeta replied with a smile, "this technique… takes a bit of concentration, so I needed you fighting stupid to give me enough time to get it going."

"What you are talking about? You don't have any technique that can save you now, I know everything there is to know about you."

"You think so, huh?" the Saiyan Prince taunted as he drew himself up to his full height. "Tell me then, did you ever hear about Frieza's interest in the Fruktians? Did you read up on him sending me there to conquer them so he could learn the secret of a technique they'd developed?"

The confidence slowly began to drain from the clone's face as the possibility that Vegeta was telling the truth entered its brain.

"I thought not," Vegeta laughed, looking far more confident than he felt. The truth was, the technique was practically worthless. When he'd first seen Kakarot's Kiao-Ken, he'd recognized it as the same basic thing the Fruktians had used, only far more stable. The Fruktain technique was more like suicide than a viable fighting tool, it multiplied the user's energy significantly, but it also ate away at the user's life force incredibly quickly. When he'd first learned it, he'd thought it was the key to destroying Frieze, but then he found that he couldn't even sustain it for more than a few seconds and then would lack the power to stand for over a half hour. With his ascension to Super Saiyan, the skill had become even more worthless. He'd tossed it aside in favor of more constructive abilities. Besides, if he wanted to commit suicide he'd simply convert every bit of his life force into energy in one quick burst, as he had against Buu.

But when the Akira from the future had come back and explained what had happened in this timeline, Vegeta had started looking at possible last ditch tactics and recalled the Fruktian ability. It was a risk, greater even than the one Goten had taken when he used Kiao-Ken without fully understanding it during the Tenkaichi Budokai where they'd met Akira. Unlike Goten, Vegeta had actually used this technique in practice, but just like Goten, he was about to use an unmastered and unstable attack.

"If you had some sort of super technique like you're pretending, you would have used it before now, you would certainly have used it to save your skin all those years ago when 02 killed you and that bitch of yours."

"Come on then, call my bluff and see what I've got waiting for you," Vegeta challenged. "Rém…" a strange green aura mixed with his golden one and swirled around him, the clone either decided the Prince was bluffing or realized that he'd made a huge mistake and charged forward, "…Esco…" the clone was right on top of him, but Vegeta knew it was already too late for it to stop him. For good or ill, the fight was about to be decided. "…Ryoku!"

ooo

Uubu hit the ground and lay still, though his mind was moving on overdrive figure out how he could possibly survive the battle he was now facing. The most likely solution occurred to him almost instantly, but he knew it was a bit of a long shot. He would only have one chance to pull it off, but it was the only thing he could think of that could possibly win the fight for him.

The clone's footfalls reached his ear a second later, as he began to gather the necessary energy in his hand, praying that the clone would taunt him long enough for him to pull his plan off.

"I can see why you fell for a monkey, you're just as pathetic as them," the clone chuckled as its footsteps came to a stop right next to the human's head.

Akira's duplicate reached down and grabbed the prone human warrior by the neck and lifted him off the ground, turning him around so it could flaunt its power over him once more.

"At least when you return to Hell, you'll already be familiar with the neighborhood."

"I'm not the one heading there!" Uubu yelled as his hand came up, and a beam of light leapt from his finger tip, striking the clone in the face. There was a puff of smoke and the hand around Uubu's neck vanished, allowing the young man to fall to the ground as a piece of chocolate landed next to him.

"I didn't think that would actually work," the young man laughed at his good fortune, and then instantly regretted it as his ribs, chest, stomach, back, arms, head, and knee protested the shaking of his body.

After a moment of rest, he gingerly climbed to his feet and picked up the chocolate Akira. "I guess it's true what they say," he grinned, "it's better to be lucky than good."

He was about to pop the chocolate in his mouth when suddenly the hand holding it shot up and slammed into his face.

Uubu stumbled back in pain and confusion from the blow he'd apparently delivered to himself. "What the—"

His hand struck him in the face again before he could finish the question.

ooo

Pan's fist connected with the clone's face at the same time its foot slammed into her stomach and both fighters were sent flying in opposite directions.

Again.

Since she took the battle to the sky, they'd been at a complete deadlock, neither seemed capable of hitting the other without suffering an equal blow in return. The only question in her mind was how long could they keep it up? She knew she was starting to tire already, the Super Saiyan Four form took a lot of energy to maintain and she was definitely feeling the effects. Not that she was in danger of being unable to remain transformed yet, but she knew she couldn't keep it up for too much longer. She still had a little while before things got that bad, but every blow the clone landed inched her a bit closer to that eventuality.

What she was really worried about, was that the clone might not be under the same constraints that she was. After all, it had a tail, so it had probably been able to reach this form for a long time, what if it could hold it longer than she could? When she fell out of Super Saiyan Four she'd be back to level two at best, maybe not even that. She wouldn't stand a chance against the clone if it lasted even a minute longer than she did.

With that thought, Pan decided she was just going to have to finish the fight quickly. She couldn't let it go on a second longer than it had to.

With a growl she charged forward and swung at the clone, sending it crashing into the ground, but not before it got a kick in that snapped her head back painfully. The young saiyan shook her head to clear her vision and then sped towards the clone that was already flying up to meet her, its left hand drifting down to its right side.

The movement caught Pan's attention just enough to keep her from being completely surprised when its hand came up swinging a sword.

The young saiyan twisted to the side, but not quite quick enough and the razor sharp blade bit into her shoulder. She came to a stop, hovering in the air and turned towards the clone, who was grinning at her, holding its blade out to show her the crimson blood dripping from its tip.

"Couldn't beat me without a weapon, huh?"

"Whatever gets the job done," the clone replied with a shrug. "An exterminator isn't picky about his tools, all that matters is that he wipes out the vermin."

"If you think that little thing is enough to wipe me out, you're in for a surprise."

"Trust me, it's more than enough." The clone was in front of her in the blink of an eye, the deadly blade already tracing towards her throat.

Pan arched back, narrowly avoiding her death, and then dodged to the side to escape the follow up swipe. Within seconds she was being forced backwards as glistening sword stabbed towards her with lightening fast speed and frightening accuracy. The added reach it gave the clone, coupled with the fact that if it hit her she'd be lucky to keep whatever part of her body was sliced into, meant she couldn't fight back, all she could do was dodge and hope that some sort of opening presented itself.

Again and again the blade nicked her skin, each time coming closer and closer to doing more than just leaving superficial scratches. She kept waiting for it, hoping for an opening, but as time wore on it was becoming apparent that there wasn't ever going to be enough of an opening for her to go back on the offensive.

ooo

She was in trouble. Akira could see it from the jerky, last second motions she was resorting to in order to stay ahead of the clone's sword. She was no longer really defending herself, she was just reacting to the movement of the blade, and it was costing her.

He knew he had to help her, he had to do something, but the question was what could he do? He didn't have enough power to really hurt the clone, even if he managed to hit it with a ki blast, and he wasn't certain he'd be able to do that anyway. They weren't moving as fast as they had been, but they were still moving and the moment he attacked, the clone would sense it and could easily avoid it.

Pan was running out of time and Akira wasn't sure what to do to help her. The situation was beginning to bear a frightening resemblance to her battle with Ammit and Akira didn't know if he had the power to keep the outcome from being the same as it had in that fight.

ooo

Over and over, the hand holding the chunk of chocolate that had once been a clone struck Uubu in the face and body. He couldn't understand what was happening, he'd never seen anything like it. The chocolate was pulling his own fist, and attacking him with it. It was impossible. It was bizarre.

It was humiliating.

Uubu, the protégé of Goku, was having his ass handed to him by a sweet. The fact that it was a sweet that had once – and apparently still was – a warrior of immense power was little comfort to him as the chocolate suddenly lifted him into the air by his arm, and then slammed him down onto the ground.

With a growl of annoyance, Uubu leapt to his feet, powered up a ki blast and fired it at the chocolate clone, but its small size had made it even quicker than it was when it had a real body. He fired again and again, but each time the chocolate avoided his attacks and then slammed into his body with starling force.

Uubu was at a loss as to what he was supposed to do. He could turn it back into a person, that might allow him to score a hit or two with the ki blasts he was firing, but the chocolate didn't seem capable of using any energy attacks so long as it stayed in that form, which was definitely a plus for him.

So his options were: leave the clone as it was and be beaten to death by a Halloween snack, or change it back and be fried by a full sized clone.

Uubu was less than thrilled with his choices.

He knew he had to make a decision quickly as the chocolate clone began tearing into him again, battering his head from side to side as it drove him backwards and then hitting him with the equivalent of an uppercut that lifted him off his feet and dropped him into the dirt.

His mind was made up in that instant. Better to be taken down by a full sized clone that he could fight back against (even if it wasn't all that effectively) than a chocolate clone that bludgeoned him to death while leaving him unable to retaliate in any way.

The magic of Bibbidi's creation flowed into his hand and then flew at the piece of chocolate, transforming it back to its regular self.

The clone looked down at itself in surprise and then looked up just in time to take a powerful pink ki blast to the face from the young human.

Uubu was on the move before he even saw if his attack had hit its target. He knew he needed to put some space between himself and the clone so he could catch his breath and come up with a new plan. He definitely didn't want to be standing there waiting for the clone to recover from his attack.

He chanced a glance back, but couldn't see the clone anymore. That struck him as odd until he faced forward again and found the clone grinning evilly at him. The human warrior came to a screeching halt, raising his hands to fire another energy beam into the clone's face, but before he could, the clone grabbed him by the shirt and drove its forehead into his face.

"That wasn't very nice, turning me into a piece of candy like that," the clone snarled. "Still, even when I'm made out of chocolate the difference in our power levels is too great for you to overcome. Could you possibly be any more pitiful?"

Before Uubu could answer, the clone's knee slammed into his gut, driving the air from his lungs, and then its fists came down hard on his back, sending him crashing into the ground.

Uubu weakly looked up as the clone landed and began walking towards him. He'd given it everything he had, but it hadn't been enough. As his eyelids slowly closed and his face fell back into the dirt, his last conscious thought was that he hoped Bra would understand…

ooo

The nicks and cuts from the sword were beginning to pile up and grow more and more serious as Pan's reaction time slowed, she could practically feel her body's energy reserves dipping ever closer to empty. The clone would finish her off soon, she could see it in the evil smirk on its face. The opening she'd been hoping for had not materialized as she'd known it wouldn't since shortly after the sword wielding clone went on the attack.

If she could have spared the attention, she would have looked down at Akira, just to see him one last time before the end, but her saiyan instincts refused to let her concede defeat until it was a definite certainty and so she fought on. At least they'd patched things up before this; she had to admit that that thought was comforting.

An unexpected fist caught her in the face, stunning her for a second and leaving her completely wide open for the clone's next attack.

"Time to send you back to Hell," the Akira double laughed as it drove its sword forward.

Pan's eyes widened as the wet scrapping sound of the sword pushing through flesh and bone reached her ears.

o

o

**A/N:** Hmm, I think I've discovered part of the reason I've been having so much trouble updating in a reasonable amount of time lately. Before (as in during the Ammit Saga), my chapters would hit the 2-3 thousand word mark and that was pretty much it. Some were even shorter than that, but now, 2,000 words is barely the half way point! I wonder if I could get more done by writing less in each chapter… probably not. The only difference would be that this story would be 160 chapters long instead of the already ridiculous 81. Sigh, oh well, at least I'm almost done…

**A/N:** In other news, I think this title comes from DBZ, but I can't remember if there was an episode with that title or not… I suppose I could look it up online, but call me lazy, I just can't bring myself to care enough to do it. Regardless, I am sure that the title comes from somewhere, so if not DBZ then someone else deserves the credit for it (except for the 'Part I,' that's a Kyle original… no really, it is). Anyway, it took another three weeks, but I pushed through another chapter and now I get to do a more fun one (I think the Trunks and Goten and also the Kanata fight will be more interesting to write than these three were), whether or not that means it'll be done any quicker is hard to say, but I'll try. Alright, a couple of explanations of things that took place in this chapter: Vegeta's technique (or at least the idea that he has that one) comes from the episode when he is fighting Goku early in DBZ and tell Goku that the Kiao-Ken technique isn't all that impressive because he's heard of/seen similar techniques used to raise a fighter's power level. Basically, I needed someway to put him on par with a SSJ4 since he couldn't get there on his own and that was the only thing I could come up with. The attacking chocolate that beats the snot out of Uubu comes from the episode "The Incredible Fighting Candy" in which Vegito keeps fighting Super Buu even after being turned into a gumball. Obviously Vegito was fighting at a level lower than SSJ4, but was probably stronger than a SSJ3 so I assumed a SSJ4 clone would be able to pull off the same feat. Plus, it gave me something interesting to write about for Uubu's fight scene (Uubu, unfortunately, was doomed to lose that battle from the start, the deck was just too stacked against him and thus the fight wasn't much fun to write). So then, next week will have Goten, Gohan, Trunks, and Kanata in their respective battles and after that I'll be looking at wrapping up the story… not too much left!


	82. Clash of Super Powers Part II

**Chapter 82: Clash of the Super Powers Part II**

o

"I hope those weaklings gave you a good warm up," the new clone chuckled, "because the real fight is about to start."

At first glance, the two level four Super Saiyans seemed frozen in their places, one with lavender hair the other with black, their swords pressed against each other exactly half way between the two of them. A closer inspection would have found that the arm muscles of the two warriors were straining as both tried to push the other's weapon back.

Finally, the stalemate was broken as Trunks suddenly relaxed his arms, pulling the clone off balance, and then spun around the stumbling warrior and swept his sword towards its back. The blade sliced perfectly through the clone with no resistance what-so-ever… and then the afterimage faded away.

Only his incredibly fast reflexes, honed through years of practice and many hours of beatings at his father's and friends' hands, saved the saiyan's life as his sword swept up and behind his head to block the downward thrust of the clone as it reappeared. The force of the blow was still enough to push his own sword down towards his neck, but he dropped to his knees and rolled to the side as he rose in one smooth motion, his blade in front of him, perfectly positioned to either attack or defend.

"Not bad," the clone smiled. "I guess it might actually take me a couple of minutes to kill you."

"You'll excuse me if I don't start worrying until you do something a little more impressive than an afterimage and some gloating," Trunks replied with a grin of his own.

"Well, I want you to feel like you're doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed."

"Very kind of you, but no need to hold back on my account," Trunks countered.

The two slowly circled each other, their steps smooth and precise, their swords at the ready position. Suddenly the clone's sword lashed out in a quick stab at Trunks' shoulder. The saiyan blocked it calmly, barely moving his arm as he did so. Just as the two blades touched, the clone jerked his arm up, slashing for Trunks' neck, but this time he simply lifted his chin and arched his back just enough to avoid the cut that would have removed his head.

The clone's eyebrow rose slightly in appreciation of the ease with which his feint and true attack were handled.

Again they circled.

This time it was Trunks who came in for the attack, his arm sweeping his blade from the right to left at the clone's throat. The clone's sword easily parried the move, but as the two swords made contact, Trunks allowed his grip on his own blade to loosen so that the clone's sword actually pushed his back towards his forearm, and then as the two blades slide past each other, Trunks tightened his grip and jabbed his arm backwards, sending the point slicing towards the clone's face.

The clone saw the deadly sword make its change in direction and immediately arched its back so far backwards that it ended up with its head resting on the ground as Trunks' blade past harmlessly above it. As soon as the danger was passed, a casual jerk of its head brought it back to a full standing position once again, with a cocky grin plastered across its face.

Trunks raised an eyebrow and nodded with a small smile.

Again they circled.

"Shall we go then?" Trunks asked after a few seconds.

The clone's grin widened and the two sword wielding warriors shot towards one another. The second their swords met, they vanished.

ooo

The two remaining low level clones must have received some sort of order to back off, because as soon as Gohan's fist was caught by the newly arrived level four clone, they immediately pulled back and gave the two warriors some more room.

Gohan never even saw them move away, all of his attention was on the clone that was trying to squeeze his fist into pulp. The two stared at each other for a moment and then Gohan swung with his free hand at the clone's face. It easily ducked under the attack without ever releasing the saiyan's fist. The sudden pull on his arm dragged Gohan towards the ground as the clone dropped out of the sky, but after only a second of falling, the clone changed direction and brought both of its feet straight up into the powerful saiyan's face.

The force of the double kick would have sent Gohan flying, but the clone refused to release his arm. Instead of tumbling comfortably through the air, the warrior scholar's arm was wrenched hard, nearly ripping his shoulder out of its socket.

Once again Gohan swung a powerful fist at the clone, and once again it ducked, only this time it ducked right into a knee that was coming up just behind the fist. The clone's head snapped back as it lost its grip on Gohan's fist. The saiyan wasted no time in spinning and kicking down on the clone's head, sending it crashing into the ground far below and giving Gohan a chance to message his injured arm.

His moment of rest didn't last, however, as the clone was up and racing towards him almost as soon as it hit the ground.

The clone threw two uppercuts in quick succession followed by a roundhouse kick, but Gohan managed to avoid them all, he did not, unfortunately, escape the ki blast that the clone charged as it was kicking and then fired into the saiyans chest the moment he dodged it.

The blast was not overly powerful, having been charged very quickly, but it was enough to stun Gohan and send him sailing towards the desert floor.

ooo

A golden tornado of an aura swirled around the clone, as bolts of red and gold lightening sparked and crackled through the air. The few clouds in the sky were drawn towards the vortex of power as it spun faster and faster, after a second it began to shine with an almost blinding light and then exploded outward, sending Kanata tumbling end over end away from it.

"Still think I'm _outclassed_?" the newly emerged clone asked with a smirk, its metallic-blue eyes seeming to glow with malice.

Kanata's tumbling stopped and he stared down at the clone with a new appreciation for the threat. The two identical warriors watched each other for a moment, their expressions unreadable, and then Kanata dropped to the ground, after a second or two, the clone followed him.

"So," Kanata asked quietly, "is this why that clone I fought all those years ago stuck around even after he knew I was going to kill him? I always wondered why he didn't even bother trying to escape."

"Yes," the clone replied calmly, "03 nobly gave his life so that my master and I could know what sort of power your final transformation allows you to possess… so that we could surpass it. Only us original three had the potential to catch you. 03 was killed by you and 02 was never able to make the transformation, only I could do it. Fitting, I suppose, since I was the First, 01… the only one to survive the cloning process and retain your full power."

"How long did it take you?"

"Seven years of nearly constant training and fighting with the other clones."

Kanata's face broke out into a wide grin, and then he started to laugh. "Seven years? Seven years?" He shook his head from side to side and then wiped away the tears from his laughter as he sighed, "That bastard… that lying bastard. He must have known it was him all along, and he tried to make me think that I was somehow different from him, unique in some way… but everything I can do is because of _him_."

"What are you talking about?" the clone demanded.

"You and I have the same body, so I guess I should be happy to hear that I could have got where you are on my own eventually, but… our souls are a completely different matter, that sort of thing must not be carried in the blood."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing for you to concern yourself with, except this: It didn't take me seven years to go from Super Saiyan Four to Super Saiyan Five…" Kanata grinned as his aura suddenly exploded around him, swirling dust and rocks and throwing them in all directions, "…it took me just _one_ _day_!"

The clone blinked in surprise, and even that small involuntary reaction was a mistake as literally in the blink of an eye, Kanata vanished from where he'd been standing and appeared directly in front of the clone, his hand flashing towards the clone's face as an enormous ki beam erupted from it.

ooo

Goten arched beautifully through the air, courtesy of the level four clone's kick, and then preformed three, tight back-flips just before landing perfectly on his feet, his body already slipping into his fighting stance. He rubbed his jaw where the clone's foot had hit him and smiled ruefully.

"Not bad, for a sneak attack," he chuckled to the clone, "but you should have used your little advantage to do something more substantial than make my chin hurt."

"I wouldn't want you die thinking I cheated to win," the clone replied easily. "I don't need the element of surprise to finish the likes of you off."

"Hmm, yeah, that _would_ explain why your little master had one of you masquerading as Akira while he was running around killing everyone."

The clone smirked, "That was a long time ago. Things are a bit different now."

Goten returned the smirk in kind, his red tail swishing powerfully behind him as his aura flared to life, "Well, at least we agree about one thing."

As one, they attacked each other, ki blasts flying from their hands, both easily dodging the other's attacks as they sped along the ground towards one another. And then they collided with an explosion of power. Fist met fist, knee hit knee, both using the same attacks at the same time, nearly mirror images of each other as they threw everything they had into their attacks. But Goten knew they weren't mirror images of each other, they had never met before this moment, so there was no reason for them to be fighting with such synchronization…

The clone was toying with him, mimicking him at such high speeds that it seemed to be acting independently, but really it was just following his lead so that their attacks always met right in the middle.

Even as they fought, he had to wonder just how powerful his opponent was, that it could take him so lightly. He knew he wasn't the strongest of the newly transformed Super Saiyan Fours, that title probably belonged to Gohan and his naturally high power level, but for another saiyan of the same level to show him up so thoroughly was completely unexpected.

The two separated for a split second and then shot forward again. Feet rose from the ground in simultaneous kicks and each was knocked aside by a forearm. The two warriors spun with the momentum of the block, the clone using the added speed Goten had unintentionally given him to send a second kick whistling through the air towards the spot the saiyan's head should have been.

Unfortunately for the clone, Goten's head wasn't there; he had used the same tactic only he had chosen to come low with a sweep. In less than a half second, Goten had taken out the clone's pivot foot and was had a ki blast charging in his fist as he rose up next to the falling clone and brought it down hard… right through the clone's after image.

The youngest son of Goku barely had a chance to look surprised before his own attack exploded into the ground at his feet and sent him flying into the air.

ooo

Over and over, the two swords crashed into each other as the two warriors would appear for just a second, trade a blow or two, and then vanish again only to reappear a short distance away and attack each other again. At times, one or the other would anticipate his opponent's attack enough to dodge and counterattack, but these rare moments resulted in little more than small cuts and scratches before the two once again separated.

Finally, Trunks decided that he was getting no where with his current tactics and returned to the ground as the clone landed a short distance away. Despite his earlier confidence, he suddenly found himself concerned with this fight. They were fighting primarily with swords, this was supposed to be his forte, and yet he hadn't been able to score – or even come close to scoring – a single meaningful blow to the clone. Truth be told, there were a few times where he had only barely escaped from a locking of blades with his head still attached to his neck.

The clone was obviously every bit as skilled as he was with the weapon and just as fast too... maybe even a little faster. Trunks knew that the first problem was his own fault, he'd slacked off in his training in recent years. His courting, engagement and upcoming marriage to Icalla, not to mention the demands of his job, had reduced the amount of time he had for training to just a few hours a week. And not only had his training time been minimal for quite sometime, but no one wanted to do weapons training with him. His father was decent with a sword, he was pretty much good with every form of violence, but even he couldn't really push Trunks anymore, Goten didn't care for them, Gohan's philosophy was that the pen was mightier than the sword... or at least a pen was more interesting than a sword, Akira was lucky if he managed not to injure himself every time he looked at a weapon (his chances of injury were further magnified if Pan was in the room), and Bra's weapon of choice was a thin plastic card accepted at all retail stores. There was no one to train with him and going through the motions wasn't enough to keep him sharp.

"You look a little worried," the clone remarked, casually twirling his sword in his hand.

"Just surprised you've put up this good of a fight," Trunks shot back.

"Liar," the clone chuckled. "You're losing and you know it. It's only a matter of time before I kill you."

Trunks glanced down at his body and then back at the clone. "I don't see any more cuts on me than there are on you," he pointed out. "If a few scratches here and there get you this excited, then I've got nothing to worry about, you're too inexperienced to ever beat me."

The clone's face fell to a scowl, "My brothers and I have put thousands of humans to death with our blades, we're plenty experienced."

"Killing the weak and the helpless and winning a duel against an enemy who's you're equal are too very different things."

The clone adjusted his stance as his face grew serious. The clone came at him fast and hard, its initial thrust flashing forward so quickly that the saiyan couldn't even get his blade up in time to stop it and he was forced to throw himself backwards to escape his death. Trunks's free hand came down and pushed off the ground as he preformed a perfect backhand spring, coming out of it just in time to have to leap to the side to keep from being impaled by the next attack from the clone.

The clone's stab at Trunks's chest turned into a side swipe that bit into the Super Saiyan Four's fur covered shoulder, but the cut wasn't deep enough to do more than annoy him.

With a growl of anger, Trunks grabbed at his arm momentarily and then attacked. His blade cut through the air at neck height, but hit only air as the clone took a small hop back. The saiyan spun with his own attack and then shot forward, the tip of the blade searching for the clone with several seemingly well-placed thrusts; however, the clone easily avoided everything Trunks threw at him. Finally Trunks swept low, looking to cut the clone's feet out from under it, but again he was too slow as the clone jumped into the air and came down on top of the blade, driving the tip into the dirt.

A small smirk played across the clone's face as it down at the surprise in Trunks's eyes.

"And so it ends, son of Vegeta," it whispered as its foot shot out and slammed into the Super Saiyan's chest, pulling the sword from his hands and sending him tumbling through the dirt.

After only a second of being out of control, Trunks rolled to his feet. The clone could have finished the battle right there, and they both knew it. Trunks was now unarmed and would have had no chance to avoid any attack that the clone had sent his way while he'd been rolling through the dirt. But such was the clone's confidence now that it hadn't even bothered moving from where it was standing on top of Trunks's prized sword.

Fortunately for Trunks, a Super Saiyan was dangerous regardless of what he held in his hands. Balls of ki instantly formed in his hands as he held them at his side, ready to be launched at a moments notice.

"You stand no chance against me now," the clone smirked. "You're little energy attacks will do you no good."

"So I should just lie down and die because you think you've got this fight won?"

"It would save us both a lot of time."

"Sorry to disappoint."

The clone chuckled and then shot forward as Trunks hurled his energy balls. They flew straight and true, but before they could hit their target, the clone vanished as its fingers touched its forehead.

Instincts that had been honed during a lifetime of fighting allowed Trunks to duck under the swipe that would have taken off his head as the clone appeared behind him. The saiyan pivoted just in time to see the clone smirk and bring its sword down on his head. Out of pure desperation, Trunks clapped his hands together where he guessed the blade would be at that instant, and out of pure luck, his hands slapped together with the clone's sword trapped between them. His luck was not enough to stop the blade, however, only to slow its descent. As the clone pushed down harder, the deadly tip of the sword began to draw closer and closer to the saiyan.

At the last possible second, Trunks tried to roll away.

He almost made it.

ooo

The clone that had identified itself as 01 landed rather gracefully – given the powerful ki blast that had sent it flying only a few seconds earlier – and smiled.

"You're stronger than you were before," it commented calmly.

"Ten years of hell will do that to you," Kanata shrugged.

"Then let me show you just how powerful I've become!" The aura around the clone flared as it charged forward, Kanata did the same.

The two slammed into one another with such force that the ground below them shattered and collapsed under the pressure given off by the collision. Both landed identical blows and sent one another flying in opposite directions, each flipping in the air just before the landed and then pushing off the ground and resuming their attacks.

As they once again met high over the desert floor, Kanata swung at the clone's face, while the clone's knee came up into the saiyan's stomach. The result left both warriors too stunned to take advantage of the other's pain. For a moment they both just hovered in the air, 01 shaking his head to clear his vision and Kanata trying desperately to reinflate his lungs.

"It's been a while since anyone has actually managed to strike me," the clone finally said as it straightened up and glared at the saiyan.

"Really? Happens to me all the time," Kanata replied as he too pulled himself up to his full height.

"Well, then you should be used to what I'm about to put you through!" the clone growled as it shot forward again.

The tactic of tossing almost friendly sounding banter towards an enemy and then attacking when his guard was brought down was an old one that had been preformed on Kanata by far more skilled users, the clone did not take him by surprise in the least. With practiced ease, he turned his body slightly to the side, causing the clone's punch to barely miss his body and then drove his knee up into the passing warrior's chest, flipping it in the air.

"Amateur," the saiyan growled as he brought both hands up above his head and then slammed them down on the clone's exposed back. "If you have to look like me, at least train a little, I'd hate for someone to accidentally get us confused and come away with the impression that I'm this pathetic."

01 was too busy flying into the ground to respond.

ooo

Gohan didn't even have a chance to hit the ground properly after taking the ki blast to the chest, the clone caught up with him just before he hit and brought both of its feet down on his stomach, driving him into the ground with earth shattering force. For a moment he lay at the bottom of the hole his landing had created, and then he started to float out, just as the clone came through the hole, leading with its fist.

Taken completely off guard, Gohan wasn't able to bring up his arms to defend himself at all and the clone drove him deeper and deeper into the ground as its fists slammed into him over and over like hyperactive pistons.

It took a while for the stunned saiyan to regain his bearings, much less his defenses. By the time he'd awoken from the haze that seemed to swirl around his brain, his back was beginning to grow very warm.

A less experienced fighter, or perhaps just a less intelligent being, might have been confused by this sudden development, but Gohan realized what was happening almost instantly. The clone was driving him closer and closer to the layer of magma that existed deep below the surface of the Earth.

Just as he realized the situation he was in, the clone's fist slammed into his arms, which were finally in front of him, protecting his body, and the rock behind/beneath him gave way and the boiling liquid rock burst forth. Gohan felt the give and instantly rotated his body juts as the clone came in for another punch.

Super Saiyan Four speed aided his spur of the moment trap. The clone missed its target and Gohan's hand grabbed hold of its armor straps and pushed it into the red fountain of lava. The clone shrieked in pain, but Gohan was already flying out of the hole as fast as he could.

The moment he escaped his intended grave, he turned and watched as the lava sprayed out of the hole after him and then the pressure died away, the magma that had escaped already beginning to cool and solidify. A smile crossed his lips, he wasn't sure if the clone had actually been killed by the lava, but if it hadn't, chances were it wouldn't be in any shape to continue with their battle.

A sudden surge in the flow of lava brought his mind to the matter at hand as out of the deadly, red liquid rose the clone, much of its fur burnt off, but still very much alive.

"That," the clone snarled in an angry voice, "was very, very stupid!"

ooo

Goten soared through the air right into the waiting arms of the clone who caught the saiyan in a full nelson lock. Goten struggled for a few seconds, but with his arms trapped awkwardly above his head, he couldn't free himself.

"Foolish saiyan," the clone whispered in Goten's ear, "you're even more pathetic than you were last time. Ten years and you're still a weak fighter, even with your power increase."

Goten didn't bother responding as he tried to pull his arms down enough to break the hold. Just when he felt the clone's grip on him seeming to loosen slightly, the clone slammed its forehead into the spot where Goten's head connected to his neck.

The powerful saiyan's vision blurred as he struggled to remain conscious, but years of training kept his body from dwelling on the frightening development. With a grunt of exertion he pulled his arms down enough to loosen the grip again and then slammed his head back into the clone's face, freeing himself completely.

The two powerful warriors fell away from each other, Goten landing on the ground and immediately falling to a knee as he shook his head from side to side in an effort to escape the cobwebs that had taken up residence in there, the clone landing and holding a hand to its face as it blood ran down from its broken nose and swelling eye.

For a moment neither worried about attacking the other as they tended to their minor wounds. And then a loud cry of pain pierced the air. Goten recognized the voice instantly and turned just in time to see Trunks go down in a shower of blood as the clone standing behind him whipped its sword across his back.

The son of Goku was on his feet in an instant, his own battle forgotten as he rushed towards his fallen friend. The ground cracked under his footsteps as anger and fear pulsed through him, pushing him harder and harder, and then at some point he took to the air as the gap between him and Trunks closed.

Up ahead he could see the sword wielding clone Trunks had been facing stand over Trunks, twist its sword in its hand and prepare to deliver the final blow.

The world around Goten became a blur as desperation pushed his speed to new highs.

o

o

**A/N:** One of the lines the clone fighting Trunks said (the one about wanting Trunks to feel like he's doing well) is a blatant rip off of one of Fezzik's lines from _The Princess Bride_. Mr. Goldstien (or S. Morgenstern, if he wants to go by his penname) deserves the credit for it. I got to that point in the dialog, and that line just popped out, so I had to use it.

**A/N:** Sigh, well, it's been what? A month, since I last updated? Something like that. I should apologize, but I'm getting tired of doing so (since I've been doing it ever update since… well, it's been going on for a while). This chapter was more or less finished several times, but each time it just didn't feel right or didn't sound good, or basically just sucked in one way or another. I still dislike it, but its better than it was, so I'll learn to live with it. Really, the problem isn't that I don't know what's supposed to happen and am having trouble thinking anything up (though that is troublesome sometimes), or even that I lack interest in the story (though it waxes and wanes), the problem is that I can picture all of these fights extremely well and they look kick ass in my head. Then I type them out and think, 'This doesn't even begin to sound like what I picture in my head!' And so I just can't be satisfied until the update gets so late that I just say, 'screw it,' and just give you what I can do. I suppose it's my own fault for being a weird perfectionist that would rather fail than turn in something that wasn't perfect (my 10th grade art teacher used to give me an extra two weeks to turn in assignments because despite spending every minute of class as well as taking it home and working on it, I could never finish by the due date). Anyway, like I've said for many months, I'll try to be better, but I don't know when the next update would be. If I could write down exactly what I see in my head and have it make some sort of sense, you'd get two more updates before the end of the day… unfortunately, that's not the case so I'll just say that I'll update as soon as I can.


	83. Changing Momentum

**Chapter 83: Changing Momentum**

o

**A/N:** I'm going to apologize right now – and probably later – for the chapter you're about to read. It was going to be longer, but instead I went with the fast update and a series of cliffhangers. Sorry about that… but at least it was a quick update, right?

o

Blood splattered across Pan's shocked face as the body in front of her seemed to almost materialize around the sword that had been less than a second away from piercing her chest. For a moment the three bodies remained perfectly still, two of them in shock over the sudden development, the other in too much pain to even move.

"A… are you… alright?" Akira's pain-filled whisper reached Pan's ears and woke her from her dazed state.

She blinked, her eyes slowly following the point of the sword that had come to a stop just before it reached her body down to where it protruded from Akira's back. He had taken the blade straight through the chest… for her.

"W, why?" she demanded.

He glanced back over his shoulder at her, letting out a soft groan either from pain or from the obviousness of the answer, and then coughed weakly, sending blood dribbling out of his mouth and down his chin.

"You… know why," he replied, his aqua colored eyes seemed to have trouble focusing on her for a moment, and then they faded to black as his hair returned to its normal color and his transformed state fell away. "I… I couldn't let… it happen a second time."

"Idiot," the clone chuckled as it too recovered from the shock of Akira's appearance. "You just threw away your life for nothing. You didn't stop her from being killed, you just delayed it a bit."

Akira looked back at the clone and shook his head ever so slightly. "No, this fight is already over, she just has to finish you off."

The clone face scrunched up in confusion and then it smirked. "Think whatever you want, when she joins you in the afterlife; you'll know the truth of the matter."

Akira's double began to pull its sword out of the young man's chest, but Akira did something almost as unexpected as his sudden appearance.

He grabbed the blade with his one good hand, ignoring the blood that began to run down from his clenched fist and then he pulled himself forward along the sword.

"What are you doing?" the clone demanded in shock as the saiyan closed the gap between them.

Akira's legs shot forward and wrapped themselves around the clone's waist as a sick looking smile formed on his blood smeared face. "You can't use that sword anymore and you won't be able to move as fast with me holding onto you. You lose."

He glanced over his shoulder one more time at Pan and said, "Even if you have to go through me to do it, you have to kill him now!"

Pan just stared at him, her eyes full of something that had no place on a battle field: Fear.

Akira's face, filled with confidence only a moment before, suddenly grew worried. "He'll kill you and everyone else on this planet if you don't!" he yelled at her, trying to awaken her from her frozen state. Every word that came out of his mouth was accompanied by more blood from his pierced lungs, it took all of the will power he had just to get the words out, but he knew he couldn't be distracted by something as minor as dying, not while Pan was hesitating. "Do it!"

Pan's head gave the tiniest of nods and then she brought her hands together at her hip. "Ka… me…" she whispered as blue ki formed in the palms of her hands.

The clone shifted so that attack would have to go through Akira first. "If I die, he dies," it warned her.

"Ha…" she paused and her hands began to shake. Her eyes traveled from the clone's face to Akira's back, the spot that she would have to hit if she fired the powerful ki beam.

"Don't stop!" Akira yelled back at her, his voice carrying strength and conviction despite the obvious pain he was in. "You have to finish him."

The clone put one hand on Akira's chest and began pulling his sword slowly out of the saiyan's grasp, cutting deeper into the young warrior's hand.

"…me…" the ball of ki in her hands grew larger, ready to fly forward and deliver death to the man she loved and his duplicate that was trying to kill her.

"Do… it… now!" Akira yelled at her as the last of his strength slipped from his body.

Time seemed to slow down for Pan as she watched the sword sliding back out of Akira's body. She could do it. All she had to do was say the last part, throw her hands forward, and let it fly. At that range, the clone would have no chance of avoiding it… but neither would Akira. If she finished her attack, she would kill him.

Forever.

There would be no wishing him back, no seeing him ever again. He would be gone from her life for all of eternity unless she decided to follow him in death in this universe.

Unbidden images of the time they'd spent together flashed through her mind. His goofy, stupid answers to her slightly nosy questions while they ate pancakes during the Tenkaichi Budokia, his smile on Namek when he returned from the dead, the way he had stared when she had appeared in her dress before going to the prom, sitting and watching terrible, boring baseball with him…

Her hands dropped to her sides and the energy building in them dissipated. "I can't," she whispered, her eyes locking on his.

"Pan…" he started to say, the expression on his face one of fear.

But before he could finish, the clone pulled its sword free and broke Akira's leg lock. Pan could only watch in horror as Akira started to fall away from the clone, his strength finally giving out completely. In the blink of an eye, the clone caught the young warrior by the throat, lifted him up to eye level and then drove the sword into his gut all the way up to the hilt as blood sprayed out of Akira's back for a second time.

"Don't worry," the clone whispered as Akira's body suddenly went limp and then slid off the sword as it was lowered, "she'll be right behind you."

Pan's wide eyes followed Akira's body all the way until it hit the ground, followed by a stream of blood that had been trailing behind him.

"He was right," the clone chuckled, "you should have finished me when he gave you the chance. Now he's dead for nothing and once I'm through with you, I'll be able to team up with one of my brothers against another of you worthless saiyans, and then your little group will quickly be overwhelmed… I hope you realize that by spitting on his sacrifice, you've doomed everyone."

Pan's breaths came out and ragged gasps as her eyes remained riveted on the broken, bleeding body of her boyfriend. The man who had forfeited his life to save hers, but she had let the moment he bought her slip away. It was all her fault.

Her fault that he had stepped into her battle, weakened and vulnerable as he was.

Her fault that he had been stabbed not once, but twice.

Her fault that he was…

No, she wouldn't think that. He was still alive, he had to be. There might be a lot of blood pooling under him, but he _had_ to still be alive.

If he wasn't…

/Akira/ she called out to him telepathically, but there was no response.

"Don't feel too bad," her enemy laughed with Akira's voice, "freezing up like that… you didn't really change anything, you were dead the moment I became your opponent and he would have died as soon as I was done with you. The two of you just picked the wrong person to fight against, that's all. Now, since I don't want him to think of me as a liar, I hope you'll excuse me for ending this now."

The clone's sword swung hard at neck level…

ooo

The clone standing over Trunks smirked as it smoothly flipped its sword around and brought the deadly blade down on the saiyan's back…

Suddenly a blur of motion materialized into Goten's foot and slammed into the clone's shocked face, sending it flying into the distance.

"Trunks!" Goten yelled as he knelt next to his friend. "Trunks, are you okay?"

"I think that answer's pretty obvious," the lavender haired Super Saiyan grimaced as he gingerly sat up. "…Dummy."

"Well, you must not be too bad off if you can still joke around," Goten smiled, glancing over his shoulder to see if the clone he'd kicked had recovered yet or not. He couldn't see anything, nor feel the clone's power level, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. The clone had had been fighting before running off to rescue his friend was standing not too far off, watching the saiyans calmly, apparently waiting for the numbers to even out once again before attacking.

"You might have been better off staying back," Trunks whispered as he too noticed the clone watching them. "When the other one gets back, I don't know how much good I'm going to do you… it got me pretty good."

"If it killed you, me or someone else would still get ganged up on, at least this way you can still take some punches for me."

"_Thanks_."

"Besides," Goten continued with a wink, "Icalla would never forgive me if I let you die… and you know how I feel about crying women."

They both smiled and chuckled, and both almost really meant it, but deep down it was no laughing matter. There was a very real chance that they were both mere minutes from death. Minutes from leaving one woman husbandless, one child fatherless, and one fiancé without her groom, if there was ever something to not joke about, this was it. But joking was how they'd always handled these situations. It was easier than trying to deal with the real ramifications of the situation.

For a moment they were allowed to just stand there, chuckling like school boys while Trunks shifted his back around, trying to determine how badly his range of motion had been affected by the large gash running almost from his shoulder to his hip. And then the clone that Goten had kicked suddenly appeared next to the clone that was already watching them.

"Guess it was too good to last, huh?" Goten said softly, nodding his head towards their enemies.

"The bad guys never seem to stay gone for very long, do they?" Trunks replied.

"Funny," one of the clones scowled, "there are a lot of races in this universe that have said the same thing about the saiyans."

"Well, if you guys hadn't run into us, I'm sure you would have furthered that view," Goten spat back. "Thankfully, you won't get the chance to sully our name anymore."

"Goten…" Trunks whispered.

"The saiyan name can't possibly get any dirtier, monkey!" the clone shot back. "You've been a blight on the galaxy since you crawled out of the trees!"

"Goten…" Trunks whispered a little louder.

"So what, enslaving the humans and taking over the Earth was an example of high morals?" Goten sneered. "Your silly little Master's name must mean 'hypocrite' in his native language."

"Goten!" Trunks growled in annoyance.

The younger saiyan glanced over at his friend whose eyebrows were raised as his eyes kept shifting towards the ground. Goten looked down and then back up at Trunks, shrugging to show that he didn't understand what Trunks was trying to convey.

Trunks mouthed something towards him.

Goten furrowed his brow and let his confusion show on his face.

Trunks sighed in exasperation and looked to the heavens for patience, and then he turned so that his back was mostly towards the two clones, held out his two index fingers and made a funny little motion. Goten stared at him for a moment and then his eyes widened and glanced down at the ground as he nodded eagerly. Trunks shook his head and wondered, as he often did when confronted with Goten's occasional cluelessness, if his father had a point about the Son family possessing some sort of genetic mental disorder.

Goten shifted a little farther away, adjusting his power level to match his friends, and then waited for Trunks to tell him he was ready. The older saiyan nodded and held out his arms as they both assumed the pose.

"Fu-sion…" the chanted as they preformed the silly looking dance.

The clones, slightly too late, realized what was going on and charged, both raising their swords to strike.

But they were already too late.

"…Ha!"

A column of light enveloped the two saiyans as the clones brought their swords down.

ooo

"Rém… Esco… Ryoku!"

Vegeta's words seemed to echo all around his area of the battle grounds as the strange green energy swirled around the blazing golden ki of his Super Saiyan Three transformation. The clone attacking him threw its fist forward into the flame of ki surrounding the saiyan, but it was as if it were trying to punch through a flood of molasses.

The clone's fist slowed and then stopped completely before ever reaching the Prince's smirking face. With a sudden surge of power the clone was thrown away from Vegeta like a rag doll.

Akira's double landed on its back and lay still for a moment before looking up in shock. Vegeta was still smirking, but there were signs that all was not well with him. Muscles in his face were twitching as he struggled to hide the pain coursing through his body and through his smirk his teeth were clenched tightly together as he held in a cry of pain.

"I… told you… I wasn't bluffing," Vegeta managed through short, ragged breaths. He took a slow step forward and the ground below his foot caved in, leaving him standing on his own aura.

"You think this is enough to overcome my power?" the clone sneered as it climbed to its feet.

Vegeta brought his hand up and waved the clone forward. "More than enough," he chuckled weakly.

The clone shot forward, throwing balls of ki as it charged.

Vegeta didn't make the slightest movement to avoid the attacks as they slammed into his aura, filling the area with smoke from the explosions.

The clone didn't even slow down, it hit the cloud of smoke at full speed, its fist pulled back and ready to kill whatever was left of the saiyan. A flicker of gold and green light caught its eye and it threw its fist forward.

Again the fist hit something that slowed and then stopped it. The clone's eyes widened in surprise as the haze surrounding them faded just enough for Vegeta to come into view. The saiyan was still standing perfectly still, his arms crossed with a half-pained, half-smirking expression on his face.

Vegeta threw his head back and yelled as another surge of power rushed from his body, once again sending the clone flying back and landing in the dirt.

"What is he?" it whispered as it started to climb to its feet.

"You should know that by now," Vegeta replied from directly behind the clone, "I am the Prince of all Saiyans!"

ooo

Kanata was annoyed… or perhaps a little concerned. It had been so long since he'd really been in a battle that he could conceivably lose, it was hard to identify the emotions that came with it. But there was definitely a chance for him to lose the fight he was in. The clone that had made such an amateurish mistake of trying to taunt him until he was off guard and then attacking seemed to be gaining fighting abilities every few seconds. It was learning from him at an alarming rate.

Shortly after sending it crashing into the ground following its predictable attack, the clone had gone on the defensive for a few minutes while Kanata had pounded it all over their battlefield. And then, without warning, it had attacked with such surprising ferocity that the mighty saiyan had been driven back on his heels for a moment before regaining the advantage. This cycle had continued for far longer than it should have before Kanata realized what his enemy was doing, it was sitting back and playing defense while it figured out his technique and then it was using that information to fight back until Kanata threw in a new move or two, at which point it went back to defense.

Kanata had only seen something like this twice. Once when he and Pan had watched Hercule's videos of the old Budokias, in particular the one in which Goku had faced Uubu, during that fight Uubu's fighting abilities had advanced from next to nothing to spectacular within a matter of minutes at which point Goku had called a halt to the match. The other time was when he'd first trained against Vegeta and had been particularly pleased with his ability to whip his newly adoptive father all over the gravity room. Vegeta had done something similar to the clone, waiting patiently and cataloging his movements and attack styles and then probing his defenses to find weaknesses. After enjoying his advantage for two sparring matches, he had never beaten the Vegeta from his timeline in a straight fight ever again.

The only difference between his matches with Vegeta and what was happening in front of him in the present was that back then he hadn't understood what was going on. He'd played right into Vegeta's hands and shown the Prince everything he had. Years of training and fighting in real life situations had broken him of that bad habit long ago. The moment he recognized what he was up against he regained the advantage in the battle, but only just barely. He'd already taken a lot of damage from the clone's counter attacks and since they were a surprise when they happened and his attacks against the clone were not, the clone had not been harmed too badly since the fight really began in earnest. By Kanata's estimation, he and his enemy were probably nearly equal in terms of power levels… actually, there was a chance that he was even a little weaker than the clone.

"You don't look so cocky anymore," the clone remarked with a grin as the two broke apart from one of their violent confrontations.

Kanata glared at it, but didn't bother to respond. He probably didn't look as confident as he had been, though a part of him was annoyed that he'd let his changing attitude show on his face.

Once again Kanata attacked the clone, and once again the clone played defense, no doubt trying to get the saiyan's timing and movements down. This time, however, Kanata was intentionally holding himself back from time to time, leaving small openings in his own defenses or overextending himself just a little bit, patiently laying a trap for his enemy and waiting for it to take the bait.

He didn't have to wait long. Having shown an opening twice, he let it show one more time, knowing that the clone had probably noted it the first time, seen that it wasn't a mistake the second time and… the clone's fist shot through it as Kanata once again left an opening in his defenses.

Its fist passed right through his head as he vanished, and then he was dropping down from above, his foot slicing through the air, ready to finish the fight in one attack.

This time it was his attack that passed through an afterimage, leaving him horribly off balance and frighteningly surprised.

"Who's the amateur now?" the clone chuckled from behind and below him.

Kanata spun around and his eyes widened in true fear as he looked down on the powerful mass of ki the clone had built up.

"Now this ends!" the clone yelled as it fired the attack that tore into the last of the Z Fighters.

ooo

The frenzied attacks of the nearly hairless Super Saiyan Four clone drove Gohan back. Where before it had been a surprisingly good and incredibly calculating opponent, it was now a wild animal ripping and tearing at its enemy. Gohan's slightly injured body was having trouble keeping up with the rush of limps and fury of ki blasts, but he could also tell that the clone wasn't much better off than him any more.

He continued to back away, taking some minor blows that opened up cuts or left bruises but never anything significant, waiting for the right moment to attack.

The moment didn't materialize quite the way he'd hoped it would as his heel hit an unexpected small boulder and he stumbled backwards. The clone pounced immediately, but Gohan had enough sense to toss a small ki ball into the air as he started to fall. The blast hit the clone in the chest and exploded, damaging both warriors and then the clone came down on top of him and their world descended into a long series of punches, kicks and general rolling through the dirt in an almost childish manor. Were it not for the fact that their punches and kicks were cracking the ground all around them or that every time they managed to land a blow the recipient's head or body was driven nearly a foot into the ground they would have seemed like school boys roughhousing.

They were clearly not roughhousing, however, as they finally pushed away from each other and paused to lick their considerable wounds. Gohan was bleeding from a long gash across his forehead that refused to stop bleeding no matter how many times he wiped the blood from his eyes. His right arm refused to move the way he wanted it to, instead shooting sharp pain every time he tried to lift it. And one of his eyes was so swollen it was nearly shut and even the small slit of it that he managed to keep open wouldn't do him any good for long as the blood from his forehead that kept seeping into his eye was beginning to form a hard seal on the damaged one. In no time at all he would be fighting with a severally hampered depth perception.

The clone, on the other hand, was missing two teeth and bleeding heavily from the mouth. It too looked like one of its arms had been damaged during the flurry of blows the two had traded. It was also clutching tightly to its ribs, which had been cracked by a lucky knee that Gohan had gotten in early in the exchange, and was struggling to breathe. Despite its injuries though, the clone was fairly certain that it had come out the better of the minibattle.

Gohan and the slightly bald clone watched each other silently as they worked to catch their breath and ready themselves for the next exchange that was bound to come up momentarily. Suddenly Gohan's one good eye caught sight of something just over the clone's shoulder: a tan skinned warrior lying face down in the sand as another of Akira's duplicates stood over it.

Uubu.

It was obvious even from the distance that separated them that the young human simply hadn't been able to keep up with the level four clone.

Before he even knew what he was doing, Gohan had charged towards the furless clone, a ball of ki forming in the palm of his hand. He knew he didn't have the kind of power necessary to fight both Uubu's and his own enemy, but he wasn't about to stand by and let his father's protégé die.

The clone jumped out of the way and lifted its leg to catch Gohan as he passed by. The Akira double's knee caught the oldest son of Goku in the chest, causing him to perform a half flip in the air, as his subconscious had apparently planned since his hand holding the ball of ki dropped down and drove the explosive attack into the ground. The resulting explosion simultaneously propelled him towards Uubu, gave him a smoke screen, and caused Uubu's clone to look up just in time to take a foot to the face as all of Gohan's energy was thrown into his speed, helping him close the distance between him and his goal in a shockingly short amount of time.

Unfortunately, his kick wasn't strong enough to do more than knock the clone away from the fallen human, who neither looked up nor gave any sign outside of his weak life force that he was even still alive.

"Gohan, right?" the clone asked as it climbed back to its feet and faced the saiyan. "You should have known better than to step into someone else's fight."

"Saiyans are rather stupid like that," the furless clone agreed as it appeared behind Gohan. "Little more than animals, just like the Master always said. No brains for strategy or apparently for counting."

Gohan did his best to ready himself as he stood over the mohawked warrior, he'd been struggling when the battle was one on one, now that he was facing two opponents, he doubted he had much chance at all of surviving.

The clones clearly didn't care about the fairness of the situation as they both attacked simultaneously from opposite directions.

ooo

o

o

**A/N: **Ha ha! A one week update! Didn't really think this was possible for me anymore, did you? Well… I actually wanted this chapter to be about twice as long, and had even started it, but realized that for everything that I wanted to happen to get in there, it would be about a 10,000 word chapter and wouldn't come out until at least next week if all went well. So, be happy, despite the series of cliff hangers that makes up this chapter, I updated quickly and will probably update again next week. Anyway, thanks for reading, please review and let me know what you think.


	84. And the Winners Are

**Chapter 84: And the Winners Are…**

o

A/N: Sorry about the wait. My computer thought it would be fun to… die. Apparently New Mexico is notorious for burning out power supplies (or whatever that thing is that the power cord plugs into in the back of the computer), something about brownouts… I don't know, I didn't even realize we've been having those recently… but I couldn't argue with the man, since my computer wouldn't turn on and the $120.00 item + labor that he put into it made it work again. Anyway, it sucks being poor… here's a long chapter to make up for my slowness.

o

Pan could feel her body trembling and on some level was aware of the fact that a sword was coming at her, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from Akira's body. The blood seeping out of him and pooling on the ground seemed to have grown into an immense lake in her eyes. He had unmercifully landed on his back and so was staring with unblinking eyes up at her, his face slack and the tiny droplets of blood that had splattered on his cheeks and brow were sliding down his skin, like red tears.

He was silent, of course, but his eyes seemed to be hurling accusations at her. After all, her indecisiveness, her weakness, had led him to this end…

No. That wasn't true. Even if she had done what he'd told her to, he still would have died and she couldn't have allowed herself to be the one to kill him, no matter what.

This wasn't her doing. It was the clones. The clone, following the orders of the creature that had killed so many people on this planet, that had left her grandfather a mangled, broken mess, it was that clone that had hurt Akira…

Her trembling increased, but this time it was from something other than fear and shock.

Pan was suddenly immensely, incredibly, incurably furious with the clone.

As the sword drew nearer and nearer, a fine golden mist began to rise up off of her body and her teeth ground together.

In an instant her arm had gone from hanging limply at her side to a blocking position. The clone's sword sliced into her, digging into her forearm all the way to the bone and bringing forth a stream of blood…

Pan did not flinch away from the pain, she simply ignored it.

"You have no idea what you just did, do you?" she asked in a quiet, but menacing voice, still looking down at Akira body. Her hate-filled slowly pulled themselves away from the heart wrenching scene below her as her dark hair hanging down in front of her face was slowly pushed aside by the breeze allowing the clone a perfect view of the fire burning within her. "You… picked the wrong person to hurt!"

ooo

"Fu-sion-ha!" A column of light erupted around the pair as index fingers met index fingers and the goofy dance was done with perfect synchronization. The two hadn't done the fusion dance in years, but it was still as natural and easy as ever. Their power levels were exactly even, their movements were perfect, their execution was flawless.

The clones, however, weren't concerned with admiring the precision of the two warriors' fusion dance, they were busy attempting to kill the two or one or how ever many of them there were at the moment. Both swords came down hard, entering the column of light and continuing their deadly path downward until they struck something hard. The light faded and then vanished completely and the clones gaped at the sight before them.

"You know," Gotenks grinned, "that's just rude. Here we haven't even been introduced yet and you're already trying to kill me… bad form, if you ask me."

The fused warrior turned an appraising eye at the sword tip pinched between his right index finger and thumb, "Hmm, nice blade… seems a bit over used though, if you ask me, the edge is going dull." He turned his head and glanced at the other sword being pinched by his left hand, "This one's much better; I bet you don't get to use it much, huh? Are you on the JV squad or something?"

The two clones snarled and pulled their swords away and then thrust them forward simultaneously…

…only to hit air as Gotenks was suddenly standing several feet farther back.

"Attacking an unarmed opponent again? Geez, you two have no sense of fair play, do you? You aren't allowed to attack me until I get my sword," he flashed another confident smile at them, though this one seemed filled with promises of pain and death in their near future. "Once I've got my blade, we'll dance for as long as you can keep up."

One of the clones stared at the fused one in confusion, too dumbfounded by Gotenks complete lack of concern or seriousness to even contemplate attacking him again. The other didn't care, it attacked anyway. In an instant it was in front of the smirking saiyan, its blade already swishing through the air down upon Gotenks head.

The sword passed through Gotenks' head and slammed into the ground. The fused warrior didn't fall or even appear to have been touched by the sword that should have cut him in half. Instead, he was standing on the clone's sword, pinning its tip into the sand and smiling good-naturedly.

Gotenks shook his head and turned his eyes up to the heavens as if asking a higher authority for the patience necessary to deal with a bad mannered child. "If you keep attacking me, I'm going to have to make you look bad before I even get my sword… no one wants that," he informed the clone. "For one thing, it doesn't look good when I overpower you when we aren't even equally equipped. For another, us saiyans don't get to fight with swords very often, so I really don't want to miss such a golden opportunity to show everyone what I can do…" A sudden thought hit him and he glanced around and sighed, "Unfortunately no one is paying attention to us right now, so they won't get to see what I can do, but I'll just have to remember to tell them when it's all over with."

The clone hadn't really been listening to the fused being's little speech, it was more concerned with pulling its sword out from under him. With a grunt of exertion it finally managed to bring the blade up, taking an impressively well balanced Gotenks with it.

"Thanks for the lift," Gotenks quipped as he balanced comically with one foot on the edge of the sword and his arms held out to help him stay balanced. For a second he managed to keep a straight face, but then he snorted and finally began to chuckle at his own joke. "Get it? _Lift!_"

The clone growled and swung the sword with all its might, and suddenly Gotenks was gone.

"Hmm, guess it _is_ time to get a move on, huh?" the dual voices of Goten and Trunks called out from where Gotenks was standing next to Trunks' fallen sword. "Fusion only lasts so long and I've got a whole handful of you things to kill…" He calmly reached down, pulled the sword from the sand and then let it rest over his shoulder, a position that could only be seen as a complete disregard for the threat the clones posed to him. "Well, let's get on with it… and try and make this interesting, I'll be really disappointed if I kill you both in less than five moves!"

The clones bared their teeth at him and charged; Gotenks licked his lips in anticipation.

ooo

Kanata cried out in pain as the clone's enormous ki blast carried him into the air, burning away at his skin, hair, and clothing. The pain was excruciating, but he knew he couldn't let things end like this. Not when he was so close to making up for abandoning the planet in its moment of need. Not when the lives of those from the other timeline hung in the balance. Not while the Arlean was still breathing.

He pressed his hand deep into the burning ball of energy, ignoring the searing of his flesh and the fresh wave of pain that accompanied it, and then he pushed back.

The ki blast slowed its upward assent, then stopped, and then slowly but surely began to descend back towards the clone.

The attack had taken Kanata by surprise, he'd been overconfident and it had cost him, but he was not so weak and so overconfident that he would allow himself to be finished off by so simple an attack. He was going to bring the clone's attack all the way back and drop it in its creator's lap, just before he killed it.

The clone, however, had other ideas. As the ki blast slowed, it brought its hands back once more, powered up another attack, and let it fly.

Kanata had separated himself enough from the ki blast to keep it from damaging him further. All he had to do was either drive it down upon the clone, or at least move out of the way and let it shoot harmlessly into space. The second would be easier, but he was going for the former, he wanted the clone to know without a doubt who the strongest Akira was. He pushed harder and felt the falling ki blast pick up speed. It would be just a moment longer...

Suddenly the ball of energy he was pushing down was struck by a second attack and exploded, sending him rocketing into the sky and then crashing to the ground, burned and bleeding.

The clone landed a short distance away and calmly walked over to the fallen warrior, its arms crossed and a confident smile on its face.

Kanata was sprawled out on his back, his shoulders and body resting on a large upturned stone with his head tipping back over the rock, exposing his neck. His eyes were closed and his body completely relaxed, only his blood-soaked, golden fur revealed that he was still conscious in some small way.

"I guess we both know who's stronger now, don't we?" the clone whispered as it knelt beside its original. "We share the same blood, the same power, but justice was on my side, you were doomed to fail from the beginning."

A tiny, almost invisible stream of blue light began to trickle into Kanata's palm.

The clone reached down and slapped the saiyan lightly on the cheek. "It's time to wake up, brother. I want to see your eyes when I finish you off."

ooo

"What is he?" the clone whispered as it started to climb to its feet.

"You should know that by now," Vegeta replied from directly behind it, "I am the Prince of all Saiyans!"

His fist lashed out at the clone's back, the strange green ki that surrounded it sending it flying without his hand even making contact with its target. The clone's back arched painfully as it flew forward and then it doubled over as Vegeta appeared in front of it and drove his knee into its stomach.

The clone coughed up blood and fell to its knees, clutching its stomach and trying to pull air into its lungs.

Vegeta drifted away from it, his feet dangling just above the ground that was being pushed away from him by his aura. He squared his shoulders and prepared to launch his next wave of attacks when suddenly he winced. Something ran down the side of his face and dripped onto the ground.

The saiyan glanced down and his eyes widened slightly. A small pool of blood lay at his feet.

Confusion floated across Vegeta's face and he reached up and touched his temple, his hand came away covered in blood.

"Wha…"

He wiped his hand on his pants and then looked back at it again, watching in morbid fascination as tiny red droplets bubbled up through his pores.

He gave the rest of his exposed skin a quick glance, but found nothing. For the moment it seemed that the damage wasn't too serious, but it was bound to grow worse and spread. He was already starting to reach his physical limit, it wouldn't be long before he'd either have to stop using the technique… or die.

He hoped he wouldn't be forced to make a choice between the two.

"You don't seem to be doing so well, _Prince_," the clone smiled as it rose to its feet. "That little technique of yours is a double edged sword, isn't it? That's why you haven't used it before now. It kills you."

"Maybe," Vegeta admitted, brushing his hand across his face to clear away the majority of the blood, "but it's not going to kill me quick enough to save you!"

He shot forward, though not as fast as he'd been moving before, hoping that the slight decrease in effort would allow him to continue using the technique for a few precious seconds longer. The clone, however, did not attack or even defend.

It ran away.

Flying backwards so it could keep its eyes on the saiyan, the clone put everything it had into keeping its distance from Vegeta.

"Coward!" Vegeta roared as he realized what was happening.

"Just smart," the clone retorted. "I could fight you and waste energy trying to keep up with this new little skill you've shown, or I could just let you kill yourself and save me the trouble."

Vegeta's speed increased slightly and his body instantly cried out in protest as blood dripped down into his eyes, but he didn't slow down, he sped up more. If this was it for him, then so be it. He wasn't going to hold back and lose just because it could cost him his life, he'd never fought like that in the past and he certainly wasn't about to start now. He would throw everything at the clone and let the chips fall where they may.

With a growl of pain, frustration, and the determination needed to exceed his considerable physical limits, the green in his aura flared brightly and suddenly he seemed to vanish into a bolt of lightening.

ooo

Gohan watched the two clones charging at him from either side with a calmness that can only come when a person knows his death is assured. He couldn't beat them, he doubted he'd even last five minutes against them, so he just watched them come.

"_Come on Gohan, you can do it… Don't hold anything back… You can do it, son…"_

He wasn't sure if his father was actually speaking to him or if his subconscious had just felt the need to send him some encouragement as he faced insurmountable odds, but it didn't really matter. Over the years, Gohan had tried to bury his feelings of inadequacy, the feelings that had always left him wondering if his father had ever felt let down by the fact that his son, despite all of his training, had never become the fighter he could have been.

He had been born with a power that not even Vegeta could rival, a power that could have made him the most powerful warrior ever, a power that he had ignored except when he really needed it. It was something that eclipsed what Goku was capable of, what Vegeta was capable of, perhaps even what Akira was capable of, but he never truly developed it the way it should have been.

It wasn't that Gohan thought his father didn't love him or disapproved of what he'd done with his life, Goku was incapable of feeling that way, but somewhere, deep down, he must have been a little disappointed to see talent squandered. And that was what Gohan feared, that somewhere deep inside of him, so deep that he might not even have been consciously aware of it, Goku had been disappointed by the way his oldest, and arguably most gifted, son had turned out.

First, he had been a wimp, crying over every little thing, always running to the powerful arms of his father whenever things got difficult or scary. Though he was young at the time and not completely at fault, the fact of the matter was that this early trait had cost several people their lives, most notably his father and Piccolo. Then he had grown into a fighter that was only in the way except when his emotions took control and his true power was unleashed. He had tried his best, though, and he'd done well when he needed to. And then his father had guided, pushed, pulled, and finally dragged him to his true potential, manipulating him into unleashing his power in a way that made it slightly more permanent, as he ascended to a new level of Super Saiyan in his battle with Cell. But Gohan had become cocky as the power rushed through his veins and again, it had cost his father his life. Seven years later, Old Kai had taken Gohan through the Mystic training, unleashing that hidden power once more, but again, he hadn't been good enough and his father and Vegeta had needed to bail the world out. And finally he'd become a… a scholar of all things. Gohan, the man who'd been the strongest fighter in the universe when he was a little boy, had become a professional bookworm!

How could his father, one of the greatest heroes the universe had ever known, not be disappointed? How could he not look down from wherever he was and sigh every time he saw his son open a book, or write a paper, or give a lecture?

Gohan reached down and grabbed Uubu by the shoulder and tossed him away from the spot that was milliseconds away from becoming ground zero. He prayed that the young man wouldn't be further injured and knowing that any injuries he might sustain would be insignificant compared to what he'd get if he'd remained where he'd been.

Even if it was just for a moment, just for a day, Gohan would still give his father something to really be proud of. He could still unlock that hidden potential once more and let his father see that all those lessons, all that training, all the work had not been for nothing. He knew he wouldn't ever be able to walk in his father's footsteps, but he would give him something to smile about on this day…

Or he would die trying.

Just as the clones reached him, something appeared in Gohan's eyes that was rarely seen anymore. The inner fire of a true warrior was lit within him once more.

ooo

"Agh! Damn it!" Trunks groaned as he pulled his hand away from King Kai's back and dropped to his knees, clutching his head and shaking it from side to side in an attempt to clear his scrambled brain. After a moment of fruitless effort, he gave up on his brain and concentrated his attention on his eyes, rubbing them hard with his fingers to restore his vision.

As his eyesight cleared he looked up and saw that four of the original ten Z Fighters who had been following the battles occurring on Earth between their other timeline counterparts and the Arlean's army of Akira clones were still touching King Kai.

At first, the fighting was fairly easy to keep track of, the images were coming in at a pace that he could keep up with, but as King Kai grew tired from keeping up the constant link to all of them and from filtering what they were seeing to a manageable level, the images began to pick up speed until they were moving so fast Trunks' brain couldn't focus on any of them. While still struggling against the onslaught of images, he hadn't noticed any of the others drop away, but now that he too was free of the sensory overload, he could see that he'd actually been one of the few remaining. Only Vegeta, Pan, Piccolo, and Kumo were still touching King Kai.

Pan looked to be nearly dead on her feet, her hair was drenched in sweat, her closed eyes seemed to be flinching about a dozen times a second, and her body was swaying as though it were ready to fall over.

Vegeta was much better off, or at least was doing a good job of hiding his discomfort, but Trunks could easily see the flexing muscles in his father's face as the Saiyan Prince struggled to keep his composure.

Piccolo also appeared to be straining under the mental pressure, though he was far harder to read than the others.

Kumo alone seemed to be riding the waves of images with relative ease, something that would have irked Trunks had he not been so fond of the youngest saiyan. Whatever it was that King Kai saw in the child that made him so special seemed to be allowing him to handle what was overwhelming the others. The boy's face was relaxed, his eyes closed, and his breathing calm and even, only a small trail of sweat gliding slowly down the side of his face and a the occasional twitch of his eyes gave any indication that he was going through the same thing as the others.

"You only beat me by two minutes," Goten's partially out of breath voice noted as the younger man offered a hand to help his friend to his feet.

Trunks grinned. "That's because I'm older," he said, eliciting a chuckle from Goten at the private joke they'd shared since they were little and much more competitive.

"Anything change there at the end?"

"I... couldn't tell, to be honest," Trunks admitted. "I might have seen Akira get hurt... but it could have just as easily been a clone or the other Akira."

"How were the other us's doing?"

"Beats me."

"It doesn't feel like any of them have been sent up here yet," Gohan noted as he walked over and joined the conversation. "But that doesn't really mean anything."

Goten put his hands behind his head, looked up into the magenta sky and let out a soft sigh. "It'll be weird if any of them end up here... I wonder what King Yemen will think of that."

"With any luck, none of them will have to find out," Trunks replied.

Goten rolled his eyes away from the sky, turning his head just slightly so he could look at his friend. "What do you think the chances are of that happening?"

Trunks let out a sigh of his own and wet his lips. "Not too good," he admitted.

ooo

Pan pulled her arm away from the clone's sword with a spray of blood and grabbed its wrist with her opposite hand, wrenching it hard to the side and threatening to twist the sword from its grasp. The clone wasn't going to let one of its advantages be taken away so easily, though, and it countered by slamming its fist into her face.

Pan's head was snapped to the side by the blow, but she did not fall away. With deliberate slowness she turned back to the clone and glared at it, daring it to try again.

It obliged, this time driving its knee into her stomach and then landing a solid uppercut to her chin.

Her body arched away as her head snapped back, but once again she slowly righted herself and gave the clone a look that told it she wasn't impressed.

The clone frowned in confusion. In just a few seconds, she had changed demeanor completely. Pan was no longer the scared little girl who could barely keep up, she wasn't the weakling who was too scared to act as her friend threw away his life to try and save her, she was something the clone had never seen before.

She was scary.

Its grip on its sword tightened and it aimed the point at her throat and charged. Whatever she was, she was still mortal, she could be as angry as she wanted, but when the blade passed through her neck and came out the other side, she'd still die.

Pan floated backwards, keeping her eyes on the tip of the clone's sword and doing her best to maintain her distance, but she wasn't fast enough. With a grin the clone poured on the speed, closing the distance between his target and his blade almost instantly.

Pan shifted her shoulders and the blade tip only nicked her neck, drawing a trickle of blood but missing anything vital. And then, in one smooth motion, she grabbed the clone's sword hand and spun as she pulled the clone forward. Her elbow connected solidly with the clone's face at the same time her knee slammed into the elbow of its extended arm.

The elbow bent awkwardly under the jarring blow the clone's hand reflexively opened, dropping the sword.

For a moment the two circled each other, the clone rubbing its elbow as the pins and needles sensation slowly died down, Pan simply glaring at it with her hate-filled eyes.

"You've got some skill, I'll give you that," the clone remarked as it gave its arm a good shake and then readied itself to attack.

Pan didn't answer.

"You should have fought like this before," it continued. "If you had, he might still be alive… he certainly wouldn't have felt the need to go throwing himself in front of any swords."

"He is alive," Pan replied in a cold voice. "Once I'm through with you, I'll get him somewhere safe where we can heal his wounds… he's going to be fine." Her voice wavered just slightly on the last part, and the clone didn't miss it.

"You must have been in shock when I stabbed him, if he isn't dead yet, he will be soon. I doubt you have any of those magic little beans with you… he's a gone—"

Pan's fist slammed into the clone's face before it could finish, sending it plowing into the ground below them. "Don't you dare say that!" she screamed as she charged after it.

The clone easily flipped out of the mini-trench its landing had created and watched her come with a wicked grin on its face.

Just as she reached it, the clone stepped to the side and drove its fist into her stomach before spinning and catching her in the back of the head with its elbow as its tail rose up and wrapped around her neck and then slammed her into the ground. The clone then leapt into the air as ki glowed in its palms.

"Now, die!" it yelled as the ki blast erupted from its palms, roaring angrily as it tore through the air and raced towards the ground.

And then a soft voice could be heard almost whispering.

"Kame… Hame… HA!"

Pan's attack shot out of the whole she'd been planted in and slammed into the clone's attack, bring it to a stop and then pushing it back.

The clone's face creased in frustration and confusion as it poured more energy into its attack, pushing the ball of ki back towards the ground.

But just as quickly, Pan added more to her side and the ball began to rise again.

"You can't win!" the clone yelled down at her.

"I'm not going to win," she replied. "I'm going to kill you!"

Even as the words left her mouth, she knew they were true. Power, strength of will, the ability to surpass her own limits in the heat of battle, they weren't just things she strived for.

They were in her blood.

Both sides of her family going back generations had those traits. Some were bound by human limitations, but they were still there. One of her great grandfathers had been a powerful saiyan warrior, another was the once fearful Ox King. Both of her grandfathers were world champions in their own right, her father and mother had both been highly trained warriors… her father had even been the strongest fighter on the planet, if not the universe, for a short period of time. Everything she needed was locked deep within her, it was just a matter of unleashing it, a matter of letting it all out in one terrific burst.

And that's just what she did. For a moment she seemed to glow and then a huge rush of energy swelled up through her body, over her arms, and out her palms as the already large ki beam quadrupled in size in an instant.

The clone's face froze in terror as the beam it had been pushing against became a tsunami of energy that swept aside its insignificant attack and ripped into its body.

Pan stared up at her work, hoping it had been enough, and then fell face first into the ground as her body returned to its normal state. She'd given it all she had, if that wasn't enough to finish off her opponent, it didn't matter to her anymore, she was too spent to go any further.

ooo

Gotenks leaned to the side as one sword missed him and then leaned to the other side as the next swung and missed. With seemingly-practiced ease he flipped over the first clone, who was now swinging at him again, ruffling its hair as he passed overhead and then ducked under the next attack that came at him.

He had yet to move his own sword off of his shoulder or even pretend to make any sort of offensive move.

The clones had obviously noticed given that with each passing second their faces became more enraged and more and more power was being thrown into each attack.

"Wow, you guys are even more pathetic than I thought," the fused warrior grinned as he side stepped another attack, tripping the clone as it went by him and leaving it sprawled in the dirt. "Is this really everything you've got?" he sighed dejectedly. "Damn, this fight was hardly worth my time… no one's ever going to remember this! It won't even be a footnote in this war! Do you have any idea how disappointing that is?"

The clones didn't seem to care as they redoubled their efforts.

Gotenks let out one last sigh and shrugged his sword off of his shoulders, apparently with great reluctance. "Not worth it," he muttered to himself as he held the sword point down, showing no desire to guard against the oncoming clone.

The first to reach him suddenly found its sword soaring back over its head as the fused warrior disarmed him with one powerful swing of his sword. The second clone swung at Gotenks' head, but hit nothing but air as Gotenks flipped lazily over it.

"Stinging Bumblebee!" he yelled as his sword flashed backwards while he was still in mid-flip. The tip of the blade caught the second clone in the right butt cheek, causing it to drop its sword and grab its behind with both hands as it leapt into the air in surprise.

Gotenks landed, turned, and fell to the ground.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" He rolled around in the dirt, clutching his sides and laughing until tears streamed down his face.

The injured clone paid him no mind as it continued to hold its hurting butt and run around, but the other stared at the strange saiyan.

It took almost a minute before Gotenks had calmed down enough to get back to his feet, completely out of breath. "Oh man, I haven't laughed like that in…" he paused and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "Hmm, I guess, technically, _I_ haven't ever laughed like that. But Goten and Trunks haven't laughed like that since Bra got drunk at her graduation party and tried to flirt with Akira… Ah, good times, good times." He sighed happily and wiped away the tears still running down his face. "Sorry, where were we? Oh, right."

He flipped the sword into the air and caught it behind his back with his other hand as he grinned and began floating menacingly towards the two clones. His flight was slow, almost relaxed as he seemed to drift from side to side, snaking his way across the dessert floor.

Suddenly he split into two, each beginning to circle them.

And then he was four.

And then sixteen.

Thirty-two.

The Gotenks were clearly moving fast now as they began to flicker out of sight while circling the two confused clones.

"You two aren't having trouble keeping up, are you?" one of the Gotenkses asked as it stopped in front of them while the others kept moving. "I can still go a bit faster, if you want…"

There were sixty-four of him now.

ooo

"Idiot!" Piccolo growled, causing the Z Fighters not watching the battle to jump. The Namek had been standing perfectly still and completely silent since the battle began, but as he yelled he pulled his hand away from King Kai and stalked off in disgust.

"Uh, hey Piccolo?" Goten asked as he hurried after the green man. "What happened?"

Piccolo shook his head at the younger warrior. "Why is it that fused saiyans are always such morons?" he asked himself more than anyone else.

"Huh?" Trunks asked eloquently, his confusion clearly etched on his face.

"Messing around for six minutes! What is he thinking? He could have finished them off almost instantly if he'd really wanted to, but no, he has to mess around… has to be the idiot… if the other yous end up here, they'll have no one to blame but their fused self."

Goten and Trunks glanced at each other and then rushed back to King Kai and put their hands on his back once again.

"Not so hard!" the kai grumbled as he began sending images to them.

ooo

The clone retreating away from Vegeta only had time to open its eyes in surprise before the initial pain reached its brain. Vegeta had been right in front of it only a second before, but now he was gone.

Something struck it across the face from the right, and then another unseen object slammed into its stomach, driving the air from its lungs. Again and again the invisible attacks struck home, driving the clone back as its body was bounced around like a pinball.

There was no defense against such an attack. Nothing could be done to slow the assault much less stop it. All the clone could do was take the punishment and hope there was enough left of him in the end to make some sort of counter when Vegeta finally faltered.

And then a crushing blow slammed into the clone's back as Vegeta rematerialized behind it. His strange green and gold ki pressing hard against the clone's spine as his fist rested a hair's breadth away.

The clone managed to glance back over its shoulder and confirm that the long haired saiyan was indeed the reason behind the overwhelming pain flooding through its body at the moment and then it fell to its knees.

Green lightening crackled up the Saiyan Prince's body, over his shoulders, and then down his arm into his trembling palm as green and gold ki began to form there.

"This… ends n, now," Vegeta promised.

The clone didn't or couldn't reply.

The ball of ki completed its formation, but Vegeta's whole arm was trembling as beads of blood began to form on his skin and then run together in tiny rivulets down his arm. He gritted his teeth and tried to focus, but the world seemed to swim in front of his eyes.

"Come on," he whispered. "Just a little longer."

The ball of ki shivered and then began to dissolve.

"Damn it!" he yelled as through force of will alone he steadied the energy attack and then let if fly. It hit the clone in the back less than a second before Vegeta hit the ground, his hair fading to black as it returned to its normal length.

ooo

One of the clones in the midst of the army of circling Gotenkses had had enough. It was tired of being played with by the fused warrior. The ground underneath it trembled and cracked as it powered up, its golden ki blazing around it like an inferno.

"No more games!" it roared as a ball of ki formed in its palm. "I will force you to fight us with honor!" The ball of ki shot towards one of the Gotenkses, who merely smirked and faded away as it passed through him. Another quickly formed in his hand and he threw it at another of the afterimages.

And then another.

And another.

Again and again, the clone attacked, each time the result was the same, but it never slowed.

"You're slow, you know that?" Gotenks asked as he suddenly appeared behind the clone, the tip of his blade tapping it on the shoulder.

"And you're nothing but a clown," the clone retorted, "and a stupid clown at that."

"Hu—" Gotenks stopped mid word as his keen senses picked up the sound of something passing through the air. In the blink of an eye he dodged to the side, but not fast enough and the tip of a sword thrust through his shoulder.

"Fool, you knew you couldn't sense us… why would you slow down long enough to taunt us?" the second clone asked as it twisted the sword, drawing more blood and a cry of pain from the fused warrior. "A child's mistake."

The afterimages that had been circling the clones faded away and Gotenks fell to his knees.

"Damn," he whispered as he clutched at the wound.

Now it was the two clones turn to circle their enemy, licking their lips like predators moving in for the kill.

The first smirked as it brought its sword up and swung hard at the injured fighter.

Gotenks' sword shot up and stopped the attack just before it reached his head. "I might be hurt, but I'm not dead yet," he growled.

The two clones stepped back for a second and then attacked as one.

Even with only one arm, Gotenks was nearly their equal. With Trunks' sword skills and Goten's improvisational creativity, he was as close to flawless as a sword fighter could get. But he was also injured, injuries slow fighters down, slowing down means getting injured some more, and the cycle perpetuates until finally the fighter is too slow to limit the injuries… and then he dies.

Gotenks had no intention of dying, but he was definitely much slower than he'd been. It had taken a fair amount of energy to create that many afterimages and maintain them while he circled the clones, energy he could have used to kill them when ever he wanted, but he'd played with fire and now he was getting burned.

Again and again he avoided death, and again and again he was cut, nicked, and bruised by their attacks. He was almost giving as good as he was getting, but there were too of them and that meant they could take twice the damage he could.

Within two minutes he was struggling to stand and their trusts and swipes were getting through his defenses far more often that he could afford.

"Okay, time out!" he yelled, touching his hands in the shape of a 'T.'

The two clones stopped and stared at him in confusion.

"Wow, you really did it? Huh, who would have thought it would actually work." He pushed off the ground and charged at them, taking them by surprise.

"Dragon Fang!"

"Wolverine Claw!"

"Bee's Butt… er wait, I mean Stinger!"

Gotenks' voice rang out across the battle ground as he preformed mostly basic sword fighting techniques, but gave them special names as he went.

The clones, taken by surprise with his renewed attack, fell back as his swipes and thrusts cut into their hides. For a moment it seemed as though he might be allowed to finish off the fight with a series of uncontested attacks, but then they too renewed their assault on him.

The three fighters battled back and fourth, one side would gain the upper hand and then the other would take it back a moment later. Blood flowed freely from dozens of minor and not-so-minor wounds that covered all of their bodies, but they fought on without pause.

And then one clone went high while the other went low. Gotenks blocked the high one and flipped over both.

The clone that went low turned and brought its sword up, nearly catching Gotenks across the chest, but the nimble warrior arched back and avoided the blade. The clone had put too much power into its attack, hoping to catch the fused being off guard. As its blade moved higher into the air, its chest and neck became exposed.

Gotenks didn't hesitate this time, in the blink of an eye his sword pierced the heart of the clone, the blade sinking into the close's soft flesh all the way to the hilt.

The clone's eyes widened in shock as its mouth fell open. Not a sound came from its body as blood ran down its chest. It simply stared at Gotenks.

And then, as it began to sway unsteadily on its feet, it brought its hand up and fired a small ki blast point blank into the saiyan's face.

Gotenks fell back, but kept a firm grip on his sword as he landed in a heap at the feet of the remaining clone.

The two stared at each other, panting for breath, and then the clone drove its sword down on Gotenks just as Gotenks brought his sword up at the clone.

ooo

Gohan ducked under one punch, and tried unsuccessfully to dodge a second, but instead was belted across the face and sent tumbling into the dirt. He quickly pushed himself up, just barely managing to avoid the powerful foot that would have smashed his face into the ground. Despite his promise to give his father something to be proud of, he couldn't seem to find any opportunities to attack. He was constantly being forced to defend himself and there didn't seem to be any chance of that changing in the near future unless he wanted to get his face pounded in.

And then he realized what he would have to do to stand any sort of chance of surviving or at least making things interesting. He was going to have to let himself get hit. He would have to simply absorb their punishment and hope that he could dish out enough of his own to force them back or at least make sure they remembered what he did to them for as long as they lived (which hopefully wouldn't be that long anyway).

One arm blocked a kick aimed at his neck, while a ball of ki formed in his other hand. He took a blow to the face, but rolled with it as he'd been taught by his father and Piccolo, allowing his body to bend like a reed in the wind, taking minimal damage, letting the worst of it pass him by.

And then he drove his ball of ki up into the clone's face. The explosion sent it flying and allowed him to concentrate for just a moment on the lava-burned clone that remained, the clone that was hopefully the weaker of the two.

Both struck with equally terrifying fury as their fists and feet lashed out at lightening quick speeds. They ducked, dipped, dodged, kicked, and punched their way across the dessert, each taking everything the other was giving and returning the favor with interest.

But Gohan was the stronger of the two. It was his attacks that did the most damage, his kicks that resulted in the darker bruises, his punches that brought forth the larger stream of blood from his opponent's mouth. It wasn't quick, and it certainly wasn't pretty, but he was winning the battle.

Until the other clone rejoined the fight.

Still, Gohan did not go on the defensive, he kept attacking, kept pushing, and kept getting beaten.

Again and again he hit them with all he had, hurting them, cutting them, ripping their energy from them, but no matter what he did, they always seemed to one up him.

After what seemed like hours they separated, both sides of the conflict breathing hard and bleeding freely. Gohan's legs trembled as he struggled to keep them under him. If he went down here, he would never get back up. The clones were hurt and tired, but they would pounce on him in a heartbeat if he showed that kind of weakness.

He allowed himself a quick glance around the battle field, searching for signs that his friends were fairing better than he was, but the dessert was growing quiet, the sometimes faint and sometimes loud sounds of the other's battles were fading as their fates were being decided. He hoped against hope that his brother and daughter were okay… but he knew their chances weren't much better than his. With a haggard sigh, he forced his shoulders to relax and brought his arms up to attack again.

The clones were grinning at him, despite their injuries. They knew it was only a matter of time before they overwhelmed him completely and finished him off.

They charged at him, staggering their approach so he would be distracted with the first one by the time the second reached him. It was an obvious tactic, but one that he would have no choice but to fall for, it was either that or let the first clone take him down without a fight. He pulled one arm back and then sent an uppercut speeding towards the clone as it arrived.

It slapped his attack aside with ease and struck at him.

He dodged to the side and prepared to try and kick his enemy, knowing that in the next moment or two, the second clone, the one that he had been fighting before he intervened to save Uubu's life, would be reaching him.

And then one of the sweetest sounds he could ever remember hearing, reached his ears.

"Tri Beam!"

The second clone didn't even have a chance to look startled as Tien's signature attack slammed into it and sent it flying.

The clone Gohan was fighting turned in surprise, and its moment of distraction cost it dearly.

"Masinko-Ha!"

The blast struck the clone in its unprotected belly and seemed to pause as it burned against the clone's flesh. Its face twisted with agony and then its eyes widened as the blast erupted out of its back.

The clone's transformation vanished in the blink of an eye, before it even hit the ground.

Gohan dropped to his knees, he'd been forced to put a lot of energy into that attack, but it had been worth it. The playing field was almost level now. He was hurt, weak, and tired, but his enemy must surely be feeling the same as well.

"Are you alright, Gohan?" Tien asked as he limped towards the younger warrior.

"Not really," the saiyan replied truthfully, grinning despite his pain, "but I've been worse."

Tien smiled and offered a hand to help him up. "You and me both… at least I kept my arm this time. My track record against saiyan's isn't all that good."

Gohan accepted the bald triclops' hand and was soon standing on shaking legs once more.

"How much longer can you hold that form?" Tien asked.

"I'm not sure how I'm doing it now."

"Well, that's reassuring."

Gohan nodded and turned his eyes in the direction the clone had been sent. "You need to get back," he warned. "It probably won't be too long now. Is anyone else alive over there?"

"I couldn't bring myself to check," Tien admitted. "But I'm pretty sure Krillin's still with us."

"Take Uubu and get back to the others," Gohan said. "And whatever you do, don't come back here, I don't know how much he has left, but if I go down…"

"Yeah…"

The human walked to where Uubu was laying, picked the young man up, and started to leave.

"Hey Tien," Gohan called after him. Tien paused and glanced back over his shoulder. "Thanks."

The human warrior nodded, wobbly rose into the air, and floated towards the spot where the rest of the human Z Fighters had fallen.

Gohan turned back towards the clone and found his enemy already standing there, just a short distance away from him.

The clone was weakened, he could see it in its eyes, but it would not go down very easily. Gohan wasn't sure if he could last long enough to finish it off. It would have to be an all or nothing shot. He'd have to put everything he had into one final attack and either finish off the clone or die.

There were no other options.

Gohan couldn't be sure if the clone was thinking the same thing as him, but a large ki attack began to form in its hands at the same time one formed in his. The two eyed each other as the sand was blown about between them by the wind. And then they charged.

The clone threw its fist forward as Gohan did the same, both trying to dodge the other's punch. Both attacks missed, but neither fighter hesitated. They spun on their heels, each bringing their ki filled hands up, nearly touching each other's chests…

And fired.

ooo

The clone slapped Kanata a little harder. "Wake up already, weakling!" it grumbled. "You're ruining my fun."

The light in Kanata's hand began to swirl slowly as it continued to grow and coagulate. It did not form into a ball, but into a disk shape.

Kanata groaned and brought his other hand over to his face to wipe away the blood and dirt that had pooled near his eyes. He leaned his head up and gave it a small, groggy shake.

"That's right." The clone grinned as it stood and backed away from him. "Just look up at me and let me see that you know which of us was better... I want to see it in your eyes before you die."

Kanata let out another groan and tried to sit up but instead toppled forward and landed on his knees at the clone's feet, one hand rubbing at his eyes still, the other dangling at his side.

The clone pointed its hand at the top of the kneeling saiyan's head and licked its lips. "Just look up at me," it whispered as golden ki began to build up in his hand.

Kanata took a deep breath and then his head snapped up, his eyes alert and calculating.

The clone was taken aback by the sudden change in his opponent and hesitated.

That split second, cost him his arm as Kanata brought the ki disk that had formed in his hand up and through the clones elbow. And then, with the last of his strength, Kanata pushed himself off the ground and drove his fist into the clone's face, sending it crashing to the ground.

The clone let out a howl of pain as its blood sprayed into the air.

The saiyan fell face first into the dirt and lay still, completely exhausted. With agonizing slowness, Kanata brought first one arm and then the other up and pushed himself off of the ground.

He only made it half way up before he fell back into the dirt. Within seconds, his fur receded and his hair became its normal black.

A short distance away, the clone went through an identical detransformation. Up until the final moment of their battle, the clone had sustained less damage, but Kanata's last desperate attack had more or less evened their power levels out once more.

Once again Kanata tried to push himself up, this time managing to pull his knees under his body so that even when his arms gave out once more, he still remained half way up, bent over like a bowing monk.

The clone wasn't fairing any better. The bleeding in its arm was continuing with no sign of stopping, though it had slowed as the body began to run low on fluids to pass through the arteries. It had managed to get its body up into a sitting position, but it didn't seem to care about Kanata or their fight anymore. Its face was pale and its breathing was coming out in short quick gasps as shock began to set in.

Kanata weakly climbed to his feet, stumbling and staggering towards the clone, tripping twice on small rocks and nearly going down.

The clone didn't even look up as Kanata drew closer, ignoring the saiyan completely. It was only as Kanata finally reached it and stood, albeit unsteadily, over it that the clone's eyes finally shifted towards him.

"It's... over," Kanata whispered.

"I w, was... stronger..." the clone gasped. "I... would... have won..."

"Believe... what you want," Kanata replied.

"You'll still die..." the clone promised. "My Master... won't let you... escape. Arlia will be avenged!"

"No," Kanata brought his hand up, "I will be the one getting vengeance today!" His hand came down hard and sure, and blood erupted from the clone's neck as Kanata's hand tore into it. For the briefest of moments, he was back in his decade of working for Heata, all hesitation lost, all injuries forgotten as he delivered the coup de grace.

For a nearly a minute he stood there, staring down at the spot where his hand entered the clone's neck, watching curiously as the blood running down his arm from his own wounds mixed with what was technically his blood coming out of his enemy.

Someone like Gohan would probably see some sort of deep meaning behind it, he thought, perhaps some sort of eternal truth about the struggle of man against himself... Kanata didn't care about that, though. He was just too tired to really move, too spent to even bother pulling out of the clone, too exhausted to even move his eyes away from the final wound he'd created.

But eventually he had to move. He turned his weary eyes towards the other's battles and his breath caught in his throat.

He should have paid more attention to them.

He should have been helping them.

He should have...

o

o

**A/N: **Gotenks' little move of circling around the clones, seeming to multiply as he leaves afterimage after afterimage behind him comes from Bleach… I think. I mean, it happens in DBZ all the time, so it's not really originally from Bleach, but I saw it there the other day and I'm certain that move came to mind because it was a pretty cool scene in Ichigo's battle with Byakuya (one of the best fights ever, in my opinion). For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about… man, are you missing out. Bleach reminds me a lot of DBZ… only with swords… and probably a better plot (or at least not quite so simplistic a plot). has all of the episodes on it (for free, and you don't even have to download them onto your computer), if anyone's interested. Anyway, back to something relevant to this genre in general and story in particular… This chapter was ridiculously long and probably full of errors as I am heading out of town to visit my brother tomorrow morning (five and a half hours of sleep? That's more than plenty, right?) so I didn't get to proof read it as much as I normally like to. Still, it is what it is… namely: done. This chapter represents the last time I will EVER write such a big battle, especially against enemies all called "the clone." I think there might be some 130+ instances in which "the clone" was used. I'm sick of typing it. From now on, my bad guys will all have names! I apologize if the length was annoying seeing as how it was almost all fighting. I just didn't want to write any more battle chapters involving so many people, so I went for the 'pull the band-aid off all at once' technique. Okay, I'm tired… review if you want, I'd appreciate it, but if you're about to fall asleep sitting up like I am right now, I'll forgive you if you don't bother… goodnight.


	85. Regrouping

**Chapter 85: Regrouping**

o

**A/N:** Sorry about the web site that I mentioned being left off of my last Author's note, the site is 'youtube' with the typical other stuff around it. With that out of the way I must say that it's amazing what a little thing like not having to keep up with five or more battles can do to a guy's motivation. I actually wanted to work on this chapter! I'm definitely not writing a story like this again or at least not until I've forgotten things that have already happened in fights that I've written so I can feel like I'm being creative as I rewrite a bunch of stuff that's already out there.

o

_Thunk_

The clone's sword sunk into the ground right between Goten and Trunks' heads. The two's eyes were wide as they stared up at the bleeding and dying clone and then turned and looked at each other.

"Good timing," Goten said with a weak grin.

"Yeah," Trunks agreed as he pulled the sword he was holding out of the clone's chest.

The Akira double swayed unsteadily on its feet as its body shimmered and then dropped out of its Super Saiyan Four transformation. It's eyes were half closed as it looked down on them with impotent hatred. Slowly its mouth opened and a river of blood spilled down on the two warriors.

They tried to scramble away from the flood of fluids, but as soon as they began to move they discovered that the fight had taken far more out of them than they realized. Combined they had the power to continue fighting despite their injuries, on their own was a different matter though.

"Ugh," Goten groaned as the blood splattered on him. He tried to roll, but his pierced shoulder protested so loudly as his weight pressed down on it that he was forced to cease his efforts.

Trunks fared only slightly better, as his good shoulder was the one that remained on the ground. He at least managed to roll over, but then had to stop and rest with his face down in the dirt.

The clone took a wobbly step away from them and then fell limply to the ground.

"Does that mean we win?" Trunks asked, his voice muffled by the dirt and sand he was talking through.

"I think it just mean we survived," Goten corrected. "We'd be dead if the fusion time hadn't run out."

Trunks shifted his head a little, allowing him to get part of his face out of the dirt so he could at least look at his friend. "Good thing too," he said with a weak smile, "Icalla would have killed me if I'd died."

Goten smiled and then, with a groan, tried to sit up. It took far longer than it should have, and by the time he was upright he was so tired he all he wanted to do was lay back down and go to sleep, but he made it.

Trunks resignedly followed his best friend's lead, pushing himself up to his knees while carefully avoiding moving the arm attached to his injured shoulder.

After another minute or two of work, the two saiyans were back on unsteady feet, standing not quite triumphantly over their enemies, but standing none-the-less.

And then they turned and examined the battle grounds for the first time since the fighting had broken out. Their mouths fell open at the level of destruction around them. While they'd been fighting, first individually and then as Gotenks, all of their attention had been on their own enemies, trusting their comrades to take care of whatever they were facing on their own. It wasn't that they hadn't cared what happened to the others or hadn't been worried about the fates of their friends, but they'd been trained – from the day they could start training, even from before they could understand what they were being told – to block out all distractions and focus on the battle in front of them.

It was cold blooded.

It was nearly impossible to do half the time.

It was the only way to survive the sort of fighting they'd been engaged in for a good portion of the day.

"Come on," Goten whispered. "Let's go see who's still alive."

ooo

Systems were rerouted where possible; sometimes bypassing some biological systems, other times routing through biological systems to circumvent damaged mechanical ones.

Though the body's capacity for self-healing was limited, it concentrated its efforts on eliminating all possibly life threatening injuries that had been sustained during the course of her battles. Bone fragments pressing against her lungs could not all be removed, but the larger pieces were taken care of. Damaged tissue in her intestines and heart region were allocated additional blood flow and cell mitosis was sped up as needed. Restoration of consciousness was supposed to be a low priority, especially since most of the functions currently being implemented worked far better when she wasn't aware of them, but that didn't stop Eighteen from opening her eyes.

Her breathing was shallow, mostly due to the pain she experienced every time her chest rose and fell, but steady and calm. She wanted to get up, but was certain she didn't have the strength to do it, not at the moment anyway.

Krillin.

He was there, somewhere. She'd heard him attack just as she'd finally succumbed to her injuries… at least, she thought she had. It didn't seem likely, especially since he'd been hit by a powerful ki blast when last she'd seen him. She'd even tried to kill his murd... attackers for what they did to him… but some part of her – the human part, most likely – was sure she'd heard him.

He had come to her rescue, he must have.

Her body wouldn't really move yet, at least not willingly, but her eyes still functioned and they shifted around quickly, trying to locate him. Unfortunately, she wasn't lying on top of the sand where his small body might be visible if it had fallen somewhere near her, she was in a hole and so all she saw as she looked around were the sides of the small pit holding her.

It was probably better this way. She wasn't sure she could handle seeing what had become of him. He wasn't stronger than saiyan, he wasn't even stronger than her, he stood no chance of surviving. It was better not to have to see his remains, that way she could hold out hope that a miracle had occurred and he'd been spared.

It was – technically – possible.

In fact, he was probably up there right now, just about to peek into the hole with his goofy grin, and ask her if she was okay.

Any minute now…

…well, perhaps he was a little injured himself. That would explain why it was taking him a little longer than usual to reach her.

That had to be it.

He was coming.

He had to be...

"Are you okay, Eighteen?" a voice asked as a dark shape appeared above her.

The dark shape of a bald man, not Krillin, at least not anymore.

"No."

"Can you move?" It was Tien's voice.

"No."

Tien was quiet for a moment and then asked in a slightly annoyed voice, "Should I try and move you or would you rather just lay there?"

"Is Krillin..."

He didn't answer at first, though from what she could see of his body language it looked as though he was trying to pick his words carefully. "He's alive…" Tien replied finally as he started to reach down to help her up. "I… uh, didn't look too close so I'm not sure how bad it is, but he's definitely alive for now."

She could tell that the last part, about not looking too close, was a lie, but it wasn't important. Krillin was alive, that was all that mattered for the moment.

Eighteen pulled herself to her feet, ignoring Tien's hands and glanced around the destroyed dessert. It only took her a second to spot Krillin's blood covered body laying in the sand, and then she was running towards him.

She managed two and a half steps before reality came crashing down upon her and her body gave out. She hit the ground hard, but quickly began pulling herself hand over hand to reach him.

Another few seconds passed and then her energy was exhausted and she collapsed again.

Tien stepped over to her and shook his head. As gently as possible, he reached down, scooped her up, and carried her over to Krillin, laying her next to him.

"I guess today was a day of miracles, huh?" Yamcha's voice called out as the long haired fighter limped over to where his friend was standing.

"I guess."

Yamcha's whole body seemed to be sagging. His back, side, one arm, and half of his face were covered in blood and nasty looking burns, but somehow he was still alive. The only reason he could think of for his survival was the fact that while he had taken the majority of the blast that had knocked him out of the fight, Krillin had taken some of it too, so the damage had been slightly more limited than it would have been. Being the first one knocked out of the fight had probably contributed to his survival as well since he hadn't been weakened too much before being hit.

Even with all of those things, however, it was still a miracle he was still among the living. He'd awoken just after Tien had powered up and taken off to help Gohan and was almost able to sit up by the time the triclops returned with Uubu. The two unconscious humans and one unconscious android were now lying next to each other, two fighting to stay alive, one more energy depleted than anything else.

Yamcha's one functioning eye shifted to Krillin's body. "Krillin's in pretty bad shape."

"I think that's an understatement," Tien replied grimly.

"So what do we do now?"

Tien didn't have an answer for him.

ooo

Pan groaned and turned her face to the side to get it out of the dirt. She was still lying at the bottom of the crater that had formed as the ground around her collapsed under the force of power she'd given off during her final ki attack.

"A…kira?" Her eyes fluttered open, struggling to focus, and blinking rapidly to shift the dried sand and dirt away from them.

How long had she been out?

Did she win?

Was Akira...?

With energy she didn't really have, Pan pushed herself to her feet and scrambled out of the hole. Her eyes scanned the area, searching for the spot Akira had landed. In the end, it was actually the clone's sword that caught her attention and helped her find the broken body of her boyfriend.

"Akira!" She ran, stumbled, tripped, fell, got back up and ran some more, until finally she was next to him.

Her breath caught in her throat. He was so pale. There was so much blood... everywhere.

"Akira?" She knelt next to him, reaching out a trembling hand to touch his face, but then bringing it back before it ever reached him. There were some things better left unknown. If she touched him and he was dead, that was it, there would be no hope of ever seeing him again. If she sat here and stared at his body helplessly, at least she could pretend there was still a chance that he'd survived.

She glanced around the rest of the battlefield and was shocked to find that she was unable to see anyone. Was she the only survivor?

No, she could feel Trunks and Goten. They were weak, but still alive. There were some other weaker power levels grouped together to the west of her, Tien and Yamcha, maybe? It was hard to tell. Her father was...

Pan's eyes widened and she whirled around. Where was her dad? She couldn't feel him anywhere.

She was suddenly torn. Should she stay with Akira or go look for her father?

Pan's eyes returned to Akira's blood covered body and she bit her lip. She had to know. If he was dead, then she needed to go try and help the living, if he was alive...

Actually, she wasn't sure what she'd do if he was still alive. She didn't have a senzu bean or the ability to heal him. If he wasn't dead yet, all she could really do for him was sit there and watch him die… again.

"Did he live?" Akira's voice asked as a shadow fell over her.

ooo

Goten and Trunks had been young children the last time they'd been as slow and unsteady in the air as they were while they searched the battlefield for survivors... actually, even then they had made flight look smoother. They flew together for only a few seconds before Trunks spotted his father and Goten his brother, and then they split up.

Trunks half-landed, half-crashed to the ground next to his father's prone form and winced at the condition the Saiyan Prince was in. It looked as though Vegeta had either been sweating blood, or some thing had been sucking it out through the pores of his skin. There wasn't a single inch of him that wasn't at least a little bloody. Large gashes over his eye and up and down his arms and chest only furthered the gruesome appearance.

"Father?" Trunks whispered as he gently nudge Vegeta.

There was no response.

"Father, wake up," Trunks was a little louder this time. He lifted Vegeta into a sitting position and lightly nudged the side of his head.

Vegeta's head limply rolled with the touch and then rolled back, Vegeta himself made no movements what-so-ever.

Trembling fingers checked the saiyan's wrist for a pulse, but found nothing.

"Father, wake up!" Trunks yelled this time as tears welled up in his eyes. He slowly lowered Vegeta back to the ground and looked around wildly for help or guidance of some sort, but knew that there was none. Goten was with Gohan, possibly going through the same thing, the others were too weak to be of much - if any - use. Besides, what would they do? No one he knew had the power to raise the dead, not even the kami's. There were no dragonballs in this timeline... there was no hope.

"No!" Trunks yelled, his mind racing.

There was a possibility, something he'd never have even thought of before he met Icalla. Early in their relationship, she'd become semi-obsessed with a medical drama on television and had made him watch it with her. She'd claimed it was nice just to spend time relaxing with him, he was pretty sure she was testing just how much he would put up with for her. When one of the doctors on the show had gotten down and pressed his mouth to that of a dying man's, Trunks had burst into laughter and declared it to be one of the stupidest things he'd ever seen. Icalla, patient woman that she was, had been forced to explain the concept of CPR to the disbelieving saiyan. He, being the man that he was, had asked for a demonstration… he never did find out what happened with the dying man and the doctor, he'd had other, more stimulating things on his mind for the rest of the night.

He wasn't exactly sure how to do it, but he remembered the basic concept. Put your mouth up against the other person's, breath air into them a couple of times, push down on their chest, repeat. It seemed stupid, but if there was a chance...

Trunks looked down at his father, took a deep breath and began to lean down to give what Icalla had called 'the kiss of life' (though he'd focused mostly on the 'kiss' part when she explained it).

His mouth was just a fraction of an inch above his father's when Vegeta's eyes snapped open. For a moment, the two horrified warriors stared at each other and then Vegeta twisted to the side and brought his elbow up into his son's face with a loud crack.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded of his prone son as he rose to his feet.

Trunks was too dazed by the blow to the side of the head to respond, but it didn't matter anyway.

"If you think I've raised you to do... to do..." Before he could finish his rant, Vegeta's damaged body decided it had had enough. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and then he dropped limply into the dirt for again, unconscious.

Trunks shook his head from side to side, trying to clear the spots in front of his eyes away and then glared at his father's body.

"If you're dead this time, you're on your own," he vowed.

With a groan Trunks climbed to his feet and walked over to his father. A moment earlier he might have been gentler when picking the older warrior up and carrying him to where he could feel several of the other Z Fighters, but after Vegeta's lack of gratitude for just how far his son was willing to go to save him, Trunks wasn't feeling particularly nice anymore. In one smooth motion, Trunks lifted Vegeta up – not bothering to worry about how much pain he might be causing to Vegeta's injured arms – and slung him over his shoulder and then wobbly rose into the air and headed towards the others.

ooo

Goten dropped from the sky, tumbled through the dirt and then got back to his feet and hurried to his brother's side, casting a weary glance at the seemingly-dead clone laying not too far from Gohan as he passed it.

Gohan was lying flat on his back, his arms and legs spread as if he were in the middle of making a snow angel, an ugly burn covered his chest and a faint wisp of smoke was still rising from the burn. Goten's face couldn't help but convey his horror as he stared at his brother's body.

"Oh kami, please no..." he whispered, closing his eyes against the painful sight.

"Is... it... that bad?" Gohan's voice drifted up to his ears like the smoke from his chest.

Goten's eyes flew open and peered down at his brother's face.

Gohan's eyes remained closed, his face perfectly relaxed, giving no sign that he'd actually spoken.

"Gohan...?" Goten asked, fearing that he'd imagined his brother's voice. "Gohan!" he yelled when Gohan still failed to move.

"I'm... not... deaf." Gohan answered, his mouth barely moving.

"Heh heh, sorry," Goten replied a little more calmly, rubbing the back of his head and grinning from ear to ear, clearly not sorry in the slightest.

Gohan was quiet again.

"Um, can you move? Should you move?" Goten asked, not entirely sure his brother wasn't going to breath his last at any second, and wondering what he could do to insure that that didn't happen.

"I'm... tired... Do what... you want..." came the soft reply.

"No! Don't go to sleep!" Goten yelled again, grabbing his brother by the arm and then instantly regretting it as a hiss of pain shot out of Gohan's mouth. "Uh, sorry again, but you've got to stay awake... I think." He paused and wondered if it might not actually be for Gohan to sleep. "Well, maybe you should... No, don't... it's bad... er, isn't it? Damn it, Gohan! You're the one who knows all this stuff. You're supposed to tell me what to do!"

Gohan weakly opened one eye and glared up at his brother. "Be quiet… You're... too loud..."

Goten returned the glare with one of his own, though he was too happy to see his brother alive to actually put much force into it and eventually his face broke into a grin. "I'll be louder if you try to fall asleep on me again... unless you think it would be better for you to sleep, in that case just let me know first, okay?" He glanced at the downed clone once more and made his decision. "I'm going to move you somewhere safer, is anything broken that I need to know about?"

"It... all feels... broken... Just get it... over with..." Gohan whispered wearily.

Goten nodded, gently lifting his brother into his arms and then took to the sky and headed towards the spot where he could feel the rest of his friends gathering.

ooo

For a moment, Pan's muscles tensed as she prepared to attack the clone standing above her, but then logic caught up with the situation and she relaxed. A clone would not have made its presence known like that. A clone would not have asked if Akira was still alive, not with that tone of voice anyway. And a clone definitely would not be wearing the remains of Kanata's clothing.

"I don't know," she admitted to Akira's future self.

"Did you _check_?"

She grimaced and looked up at him helplessly.

He face was one that she had not ever seen on Akira. It was sort of a cross between an intense desire to scowl at her stupidity, a longing to laugh at her stupidity, and an intense guilt for the previous two feelings. Of course it wasn't her that he was feeling guilty for thinking less of, it was _her_, the other her.

Kanata knelt next to Akira and placed his hand against the young man's neck, checking for a pulse.

For half of an eternity, Pan stared at the blood covered neck intently, trying to will a pulse to beat through the artery Kanata was pressing against. Silently encouraging Akira's heart to beat, begging Kanata to smile at her and tell her Akira would be fine - no matter how bad he looked.

After a moment he drew back his hand and glanced at her, his eyes hinting at his disappointment. "Sorry," he shrugged, eliciting the stopping of her heart as her breath caught in her throat, "it looks like you'll have to put up with him for at least a little while longer."

Pan stared at him while his words sunk in and then reared back and slapped him across the face. "Don't you ever do that to me again!" she yelled.

Slowly, he turned to face her until his eyes locked on to hers, there was no anger in them, but there was a quiet sadness that seemed out of place somehow. Without taking his eyes off of hers, he reached down and, not exactly roughly, but certainly not gently either, pulled Akira into a sitting position.

"What are you doing?" Pan asked softly, her anger dissipating as quickly as it had appeared.

Kanata didn't reply. His hands drifted along the younger man's blood covered back and chest until they found an entry and an exit wound and then his fingers pressed into the damaged flesh as a faint glow of blue energy surrounded his hands.

Akira's pale, previously unresponsive face flinched against the pain as the hissing sound of searing flesh reached Pan's ears and the smell of burning meat drifted into her nose. She gaped at Kanata's actions, simultaneously appalled at the pain he was inflicting and impressed by his unorthodox first aid.

A second later he found the second set of wounds and repeated his actions. Akira's eyes still did not open, but he was obviously close to consciousness from the amount of expression now on his face… and also clearly wishing he could have remained in the painlessness of unconsciousness.

"Come on," Kanata grunted, lifting his younger self off the ground and throwing him unceremoniously over his shoulder, "it feels like the others are gathering over this way. We better let them know you two are still alive."

Pan watched him walk away and frowned, almost feeling bad for hitting him, and then she hurried to catch up and see how the others had fared.

ooo

The Arlean stared in disbelief at the battlefield before him. Once it had become apparent that the saiyans had somehow returned from the dead, he'd known he would lose a few of his high level clones and nearly all of the low level ones, but to see his army nearly completely wiped out by a few humans and some saiyans? It was unimaginable.

He should have known that the saiyans would do something like this. Wasn't that the reason why he'd killed them all the way he had? He'd had Vegeta killed first because, as the most experienced warrior – or in his case, butcher – among them, he stood the best chance of figuring out what was happening. The death of the Saiyan Prince and his whore had driven Akira, suffering from extreme sleep deprivation and fearing that he was going insane, into hiding and away from the others. From there it was just a matter of picking the saiyans and their friends off as needed. It was an easy plan to execute and provided days and weeks of unbridled joy as he was able to watch them get what they'd had coming to them for the destruction of his people. With them out of the way, the take over of the planet, the enslavement of the race that had aided and abetted his enemies, and securing of a home for his children had been a foregone conclusion, just the way he'd planed it.

And now it almost seemed to be coming undone. If he didn't finish of the saiyans here and now, all was lost.

The Arlean was forced to just watch as one Z Fighter after another got back to his feet. Their numbers had been greatly decreased as well, but at least half of them were still able to stand. From the distance, it was hard to see just who was standing; especially since humans and saiyans all tended to look alike to him, but it appeared that most of those standing were - of course - saiyans. One of them was probably either Akira or the younger person who looked just like him, since it was doubtful that a clone would have had a change of heart after all the time the Arlean had put into brainwashing them, but other than that he couldn't tell who was who. The only thing he was sure of – and the one thing that gave him something to cheer about – was that Vegeta was not one of the warriors who had gotten up. His unmistakable hair was clearly not present among those who had obviously survived their battles. It was possible that he was still alive, of course, but it was just as possible that he was dead.

He prayed that the later had happened.

The insectiod looked down at the controller still clutched tightly in his hand. There were several flashing lights on it, indicating that at least a few of the clones had survived, but how strong could they be after the battle they'd just been through? Would the saiyans still have more power to call upon? If they'd come back from the dead once, would they do it again? Would they just keep coming back to haunt him until at long last he joined his wife and children in the afterlife?

The Arlean let out a quick snort. Never! He could not die now, not when victory was so close at hand! The clones would fight on until ever last one of the blasted saiyans was dead and then he'd see their bodies hanging from pikes outside his palace, a warning to those who dared oppose him!

He pressed a series of buttons on the controller and waited impatiently to see what was left of his army. If the saiyans thought they'd won already, they were in for a rude awakening!

ooo

Kanata and Pan had just about reached the rest of the injured, weary, and in various states of consciousness Z Fighters when it happened. The body of a clone, that had been lying face down in the dirt, suddenly twitched and then slowly rose to its feet. Kanata's arm rose up to attack, but before he could, another clone rose, this one having been lying under a pile of rocks just to he and Pan's left. The distraction allowed the first to get away, causing Kanata to turn towards it just as the second one rose into the air as well. Neither of the clones even looked at the two saiyan warriors who stared at them in confusion.

Kanata watched with growing dread as the two clones slowly and unsteadily flew back to where the Arlean was still standing. The older saiyan's eyes swept across the battlefield were a dozen or more clones were following the lead of the first two. Anything that wasn't completely dead was returning to its master. Clones missing arms, legs, bleeding profusely from various wounds, it didn't seem to matter how injured they were, as one they were returning to their master.

He watched them go for a moment and then looked down at Pan and frowned thoughtfully. "Come on," he said at last, "we'll get to the others and decide what needs to be done."

She looked like she was about to object, but before she could, he turned and continued his trek.

It only took a minute or two longer and they were being greeted – a little less enthusiastically than they would have before the unexpected massing of the clones – by those friends still conscious enough to do so.

As he dropped Akira into the dirt next to Uubu, Kanata turned to the remaining Z Fighters. They were all injured and tired. Not a one of them had escaped unbloodied from their battles. Akira, Vegeta, Gohan, Uubu, and Krillin looked like they had life threatening injuries and would most likely be dead within the hour without any treatment. Yamcha and Tien were bleeding, burned, and almost completely out of gas. They could probably fly, slowly, but that would be about the extent of their ki abilities and even that was probably giving them too much credit. Goten and Trunks were sporting identical holes in their shoulders and, while still standing, appeared to be acting less hurt than they really were. Pan was physically, mentally, and – as the saiyan from the future noted while watched her kneeling over Akira and Gohan, whispering softly but fervently to the two warriors who couldn't hear her, telling them that they weren't allowed to die and had better not even be contemplating it – emotionally drained, she would be worthless in a fight at this point.

His eyes swept over them one last time as a plan began to form in his mind. Few, if any, of them would live through this upcoming last battle. They had done more than he'd thought possible, even Akira had been useful – though Kanata hated to admit it. They'd saved him in more ways than one. He couldn't let them die here, not for him. Ten years earlier, his inaction, fear, and stupidity had led to the deaths of everyone he'd ever loved, he wouldn't let it happen twice.

"It's time to leave," he said in a soft voice as he turned and looked at the cluster of clones around his enemy.

o

o

**A/N: **This is the story that ne-ver ends… yes it goes on and on my frie-nds… I don't know why I star-ted writing it, not knowing where it went… but I'll continue writing it forever just because this is the story that ne-ver ends…….. Hmm, I don't think I'm going to quit my low paying day job and become a song writer any time soon. Okay, next chapter is the last one… well, not the real last one, just the last official narration chapter. I was going to have a lot more happen in this story than just the discovery that all of the Z Fighters were still alive (if only for the moment)… like the actual end to the whole conflict, but when I hit 5K words and was really only half way done, I decided that enough was enough. As my little song above will tell you, this story doesn't seem to want to end. But it WILL. Two chapters, that's it, if it isn't done by then, too bad. I'm still writing "the end" at the bottom of the chapter after next and not updating it anymore… that'll teach it to hang over my head for almost two stinkin' years! Still, I suppose I should be kind of proud of myself, this is the longest story in the dragonballZ section (by over 10k words and still going)… that's an accomplishment, I guess. Thanks, as always, for all of the wonderful reviews. I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter as well. Happy Easter to those who celebrate it… actually, Happy Easter to those who don't celebrate it, too.


	86. Final Act of Vengeance

**Chapter 86: Final Act of Vengeance**

o

A collective sigh of relief went up from the few Z Fighters who had managed to watch all of the fighting below through King Kai. Vegeta's legs quivered for a moment and it looked like it might drop to his knees, but then his natural stubbornness took over and he pulled himself up to his full height. Pan had no such qualms about giving into her body's desires and immediately flopped onto her back, her chest rising and falling as quickly as air could be pulled in, her eyes closed the moment she hit the grass and it was difficult to tell if she was even still conscious. Piccolo took a deep, calming breath, wiped some sweat from his forehead and let all of the muscles in his body relax. Within moments, the only sign of the mental trial he'd been through was his slightly elevated breathing level. Kumo also took a deep breath and relaxed, but unlike Piccolo, his knees trembled and he quickly sat down. He hadn't shown as much strain as the others during the viewing of the battles, but he'd felt it just as much as they had and had far less strength than the others to rely upon.

Despite being forced to sit down, he quick to recover. "We won!" he announced to the rest of the group that had dropped out earlier.

"And they all…" Gohan's voice trailed off as though he feared the answer.

"I think they'll all make it," Kumo replied quickly, flashing the trademark Son grin. "A few of them are pretty beat up, but, you know, they're you guys… sort of. They'll be fine."

Gohan nodded, unconvinced by Kumo's minor hero worship of the older Z Fighters, and went to discuss it with King Kai while Goten and Trunks began begging the youngest saiyan for details on all of the fights in general, but their counterparts' battles in particular. Kumo happily regaled them with the story, though more than a few parts were a touch exaggerated.

"Is it true?" Gohan asked King Kai.

The short deity looked up at the saiyan, his round sunglasses reflecting an unseen light and appeared to think for a moment before replying. "They've all survived the battle and if they can be healed soon enough, they should live, but…

"But?"

"But there's nothing left to heal them on our Earth," Vegeta supplied. "The senzu beans are gone, Capsule Corp is destroyed, if they can't survive healing naturally, they won't survive at all."

This comment caught the attention of the rest of the group, even interrupting Kumo as he was describing, in great, embellished detail, Gotenks' battle against two powerful clones.

"They have to survive!" the youngest saiyan cried out. "If they die here…"

"It's permanent," Trunks finished for him.

For a long moment, no one said anything. The only sound on the entire planet was the chirping of a lone grasshopper, which was silenced when King Kai shot a reproachful glare at Gregory.

"It's simple!" Goten yelled, brightening instantly as a thought occurred to him. "We'll just ask the Supreme Kai to go down and heal them! He'll have them fixed up in no time."

"It can't be done," King Kai said with a shake of his head.

"Why not?" Kumo asked in shock.

"This isn't a matter that affects the whole universe, or even a whole galaxy, it's just a planetary dispute, he can't interfere," Piccolo replied. "The kais are bound by rules, just like we are."

"That's bullshit!" Kumo yelled, voicing the thoughts going through most of the younger Z Fighters. "What about when he helped out after Ammit, or Baby, or…"

"All of those battles had stakes that went beyond just Earth," Gohan sighed. "If they weren't beaten on Earth, they had the power to take over everything in the living universe, maybe even more than that. This is more like dad's fight with Frieza, if we lose, maybe a few more worlds fall under his control, but that's about it."

The youngest saiyan scowled, but did not immediately begin to argue against his uncle's point.

"We'll just have to wait and see what happens," King Kai said finally. "There's a chance that they could still all make it."

Somehow his words weren't very comforting.

ooo

The Arlean smiled joyfully as he watched the clones return to him. There weren't many left, and most were grievously wounded, but there were enough of them that they shouldn't have too much trouble finally destroying the remaining saiyans and their friends. He never would have believed that so many of his fighters would be wiped out by just a handful of saiyans and humans.

His clone army had been created from what he thought was the strongest of the Z Fighters, even if he'd been forced to reduce their power during the cloning process, they should have easily defeated his enemies. How could the saiyans have managed to overpower so many of them?

Was it possible that the universe had actually sided with _them_? Were they meant to always be the strongest, to always come out as the winners? Had fate decreed that his race was to vanish from existence while these barbarians thrived?

No! He would not allow it. He would see to it that his enemies were dead and buried for the last and final time. He would see them crushed and then he would hang their bodies in front of his palace as a warning to anyone else who dared defy him and as a lasting symbol of his ultimate victory for his children. It was his fate to revive his beautiful race; he would not let it be snatched away by a few monkeys.

The Arlean pressed a button on his controller and nodded to one of the clones standing to his left as a ball of ki began forming in its hand.

ooo

There faint breeze drifted across the torn up desert landscape, rolling loose sand over the cracked rocks and into the numerous craters. It was the beginning of the desert returning to normal, though the process would most likely take dacades to complete.

Kanata couldn't help wondering what might happen if he had those same years. Would he return to normal? Could he even remember what normal was? Probably not. He had become something horrible to fight something horrible. Every crime the Arlean had committed, Kanata had topped him.

Killing a dozen defenders of a planet? Kanata had wiped out entire armies. Conquering the planet? Kanata had conquered entire solar systems. Enslaving the population of the planet and killing those who resisted? Kanata had enslaved nearly every world he'd set foot on after he began working for Heata and those that he hadn't enslaved, he'd cleared of all intelligent life. To fight the darkness of the Arlean, he had become a darker darkness.

There was no way to change what he'd become, to undo what he had done, or to fix the crimes he had committed. Truth be told, he didn't _want_ to undo change the way things had happened. His actions had saved his friends, even if they weren't exactly the friends he'd set out to save. It was almost better this way, none of them would go through the pain that the Arlean had put the Z Fighters from this timeline through. He hadn't just resurrected those who had died; he'd made it so they'd never died to begin with.

_"No one is beyond salvation. No matter how far we fall, our creator, Jouten, still loves us; still calls for us in the darkness..."_

Kanata snorted in disgust. Of course_ those_ words would come back to him, but Cypress had been a naive child. There was no Jouten, and if there was, it wouldn't want anything to do with someone like Kanata. No matter what was calling to him, after what he'd done over the last ten years, it would have given up.

"It's time to leave," Kanata said quietly as his eyes drifted along the line of clones standing between him and their master.

Trunks nodded. "He's right, if we get back to the ship we can heal up and come back to finish them off when we're at fu—"

"No," the saiyan from the future said softly with a shake of his head, "it's time for _you_ to go back to your timeline; you've done all you need to here."

The heads of the few still-conscious Z Fighters snapped towards him.

"What?" Pan gasped.

"Take the injured and go home."

"But—"

"They'll die if you don't take them away from here," he cut her off in an icy voice. "I don't need your help anymore. Leave."

"We came here to save you," Pan pointed out.

"You can't save me," he whispered, "You should have figured that out by now."

"You're wrong!" she yelled back at him, but he merely turned away from her.

Further arguing was interrupted by a grunt of pain from Vegeta as his eyes opened. Ever so slowly he rose to his feet, panting heavily and dripping blood on the dessert floor.

Trunks started to reach for him, but the Saiyan Prince waved him off wearily. "I'm fine," he said, obviously not fine.

The saiyan from the future sighed as he brought his hand up and stroked the thin scar on his cheek absentmindedly. "Take them and go, live your lives the way they should have been," his voice was strangely calm. "And, if he lives... tell Akira that he was right... he and I, we do have an obligation to use what we were given the right way. Make sure he doesn't ever forget it."

"What are you going to do?" Goten asked.

Again his thumb ran over the scar. "Once you leave, I'm going to finish things. The dead have waited long enough for justice."

The Z Fighters – except for Vegeta – glanced at each other, each wearing an identical look of disbelief.

"Very well then," Vegeta glanced at the others and – motioning towards those still lying on the ground – said, "Pick them up, we're leaving."

Pan couldn't believe her eyes as Trunks, Tien, Goten, and Yamcha reluctantly nodded and began gently lifting the injured off the ground. She opened her mouth to try to argue the Akira from the future out of whatever it was exactly that he planned to do, or at least to tell Vegeta to knock some sense into the last of this timeline's Z Fighters, but Trunks caught her eye before any sound escaped her lips and shook his head.

"If you don't leave now, Akira will die here and you'll lose him," Kanata reminded her in his still eerily calm voice, the voice of a man who had resigned himself to his fate. "Go, please."

She nodded hesitantly and then picked up her boyfriend and rose into the air, leaving only Vegeta standing with the last of the Z Fighters.

For a moment neither man said anything, and then Kanata's lips turned up in a half smile that never reached his eyes. "What's it like? I know I won't be receiving a reward this time around…"

Vegeta was silent as he thought about his answer and then said, "I won't lie to you. It is not a pleasant place. They call it 'Hell' for a reason, or they would if they weren't so squeamish about that name."

Kanata's smile was a little more genuine this time. "Good. Maybe an eternity there will pay for what I've done."

Vegeta started to say something to him, perhaps to tell him that what he'd done wasn't so bad, that he himself had done far worse, or maybe just to thank him for doing it and giving the saiyans from the other timeline a chance to live. Whatever it was, he didn't get the chance as a ki blast was fired from the crowd of clones, forcing the two saiyans to dodge out of the way.

"Get going!" Kanata yelled.

Vegeta nodded and took off through the sky in the same direction the rest of the Z Fighters had gone.

ooo

The Arlean watched in confusion as most of the Z Fighters began flying away, all save one. Where they retreating? Were they abandoning their friend and fleeing after seeing how many clones had survived? It didn't seem likely.

In all his years of studying the saiyans, he'd never seen behavior like this. They were usually loyal to a fault and often refused to retreat from a battle, even when it was tactically necessary.

The monkeys were up to something. That was the only answer.

"You're friends are running away," he called out to the sole remaining Z Fighter, wondering if the monkey would be dumb enough to reveal his plan if he was provoked. Even from a distance, he knew it had to be Akira. "I didn't realize saiyans were so cowardly."

The saiyan didn't respond.

"It doesn't really matter anyway," the Arlean continued. "Once you're dead, my clones will go to the ruins of West Capital and turn it into one large crater. You won't be alone in hell for long."

Kanata smiled and called back, "You're right about me having company."

The two stared at each other across the expanse of dessert, and then the Arlean yelled, "I will bury your pestiferous race once and for all today!"

"I don't even know what that means," the saiyan replied with a shrug and a role of his eyes that the Arlean couldn't see from the distance, "but you won't be burying anyone ever again." A golden aura formed around him and with a grunt of pain he transformed as far as his energy depleted body would let him.

Super Saiyan level one.

That was all he could do.

The Alrean pressed a button and pointed at the saiyan and the clone army surged forward, racing towards the lone, weary, injured warrior.

Kanata watched them come for a moment, noting where the few that were capable of a Super Saiyan transformation were located and trying to gauge how strong the rest could possibly be after all the injuries they'd sustained. This was not a fight he could win, obviously, but he didn't really have to win. All of the clones were probably dependent on the Arlean's slave controller, all he had to do was destroy that – and, of course, the Arlean – and all of the clones would be defeated.

He took a deep breath, flexed his knees, and then dashed towards the attacking clones.

ooo

King Kai's head was beginning to hurt as the debate over the rules governing the kais and their interference in the living world continued to go back and forth. Kumo seemed to be the one most opposed to the rules and still, despite the examples being given that showed he was mistaken, refused to believe that the Supreme Kai could not go down and heal the Z Fighters from the other timeline.

The others seemed to have accepted the unchangeable facts of the matter, but the young saiyan's sense of fairness refused to let him see the truth of the matter. In his inexperienced eyes, doing what was right (or at least what he considered to be right) far outweighed breaking or bending the rules.

Just as Kumo once again began railing against the injustice of it all, the kai's head snapped to the side and all of his attention was focused back on the planet Earth.

His eyes brows rose so high that they vanished beneath his black hat as his antennae began to twitch.

"What is it?" Gohan, the first to notice the expression on King Kai's face, asked.

King Kai frowned for a moment and then glanced at Pan as he whispered, "Akira will be joining us shortly."

ooo

Kanata didn't bother to attack or defend as he made his way through the mob of clones. He ducked and dodged when possible, but even that was kept to a minimum. All of his energy was being put into his speed and building up for his last attack.

The clones that had been flying towards him had been forced to change directions in order to have a chance at attacking the speeding saiyan.

For a moment, it seemed as if his unorthodox tactic would work and that he would be able to reach the Arlean before the clones could react, but then a ki blast exploded just behind him. The explosion, coupled with his own momentum sent him plowing face first into the dirt.

But then he pushed himself off the ground and returned to his charge, not bothering to even look around at the clones which were beginning to surround him.

Fist, feet, ki blasts, all were coming his way, and yet he just kept pushing forward. Sometimes he was hit, sometimes he went down, but he never stopped moving forward.

The Arlean watched in confusion as the saiyan continued to race towards him, wondering what the young warrior could possibly be thinking. And then he looked down at the controller in his hand and realization struck, bringing with it the icy cold grip of fear around his heart. The saiyan only wanted to destroy the controller and with it, the clone army.

"Stop him!" he screamed. "Don't let him get any closer!"

The clones immediately complied, redoubling their attacks.

Ki blasts tore up the ground all around Kanata, showering him with dirt and smoke as he did his best to weave through the deadly beams of light, always pressing forward while the ultimate attack continued to build within him.

And then the whole right side of his body cried out in agony as something ripped into him, shattering ribs, melting skin, and burning internal organs beyond repair. The saiyan crashed into the ground, tumbling through the dirt until he came to a stop a short distance from his goal.

The Arlean backed away as he screamed for the clones to finish Kanata.

More ki blasts struck the downed saiyan, tearing into him from all angles. Through the pain he looked up and saw the Arlean, so close he could see the lone antennae twitching nervously and a few stray wires swaying in the slight breeze. He could feel his last attack starting to lose power as his energy slipped from his body in the blood flowing out of him.

"No..." Kanata whispered, "No, I won't fail...not this time." And then he slowly pulled himself to his feet, staggering in the direction of his enemy.

"Kill him!" the Arlean screamed again at the sight of the bloodied warrior resolutely stalking towards him.

Suddenly an energy blast pierced Kanata's back and erupted from his chest. He gasped as he looked down and could see into his own body. He tried to draw some air into his lungs but choked as blood gurgled up out of his mouth and nose. With a small shake of his head, he took one staggering step after another, almost falling again, but still pressing forward. He would not be stopped, could not be stopped, not when he was so close.

"Just...just stop him!" The Arlean yelled desperately as the bloodied saiyan continued moving forward.

Several clones latched onto the saiyan warrior, their muscles straining against him as he tried to push onward.

They were powerful, but they were also injured and he was possessed, every ounce of energy he had was dragging him towards the Arlean.

Still more of the clones grabbed onto him, some even grabbing onto their fellow clone. Kanata was swallowed up by the mob of bloodied Akiras, but still the crowd was pushed towards the Arlean until finally a powerful, blood covered hand reached out and grabbed the insectiod by the throat. Slowly the mob fell away as Kanata rose into the air, dragging the Arlean with him.

"So..." the saiyan whispered in a raspy voice as blood drained from his wounded body, "this is...where it ends...for us." He pulled the Arlean close to him in a bear hug. The cracking of the insect's exoskeleton seemed to echo across the battlefield as purple fluids began to run out of the breaks, mixing with Kanata's red blood and falling onto the clones who were rising after them.

Even though the Arlean wasn't particularly talented in ki sensing, he could feel the enormous energy swelling within the saiyan, more energy than a being as injured as Kanata should have been able to hold.

The clones shot towards the rapidly ascending duo, grabbing hold of Kanata once again and desperately trying to free their master from the last remaining saiyan's clutches.

And then it happened. It was like nothing Kanata had ever experienced before, nothing he'd ever even imagined before, though he'd known more or less what to expect. His whole body was literally on fire as every muscle, every organ, every piece of tissue, every cell began to convert all of his life force into one burst of energy. He could feel the ki as it rose off of him, not in the normal, natural fashion, but fast and hard. His muscles clenched tightly, breaking his enemy's skeleton even more, and the energy began to swirl around him in an enormous sphere that lit up the sky like a second sun.

The clones who had rushed to their master's aid turned to flee, but there was no chance of them escaping in time. Everything within a half mile radius was doomed to be vaporized the instant the attack detonated.

As the pain enveloped him and his body began to rapidly disintegrate, the flowery words that Kanata had almost expected to come to him, never materialized. This wasn't a grand sacrifice, it wasn't something that would make up for all that he had done in the past ten years, but it was the final shot that would end a war that had consumed the planet, and that was enough.

"_No matter how far we fall our creator, Jouten, still loves us; still calls for us in the darkness..."_

Kami, he wished he'd never heard such horribly teasing words.

Kanata threw his head back and screamed as the kamikaze attack detonated, instantly reducing the entire battlefield as well as all of the clones, himself, the Alrean, and – most importantly – the slave controller to their base elements.

The war was over.

No body won.

o


	87. Epilogue

Epilogue

o

Her feet pounded hard against the pavement as she ran along the dimly lit, empty street. The pouring rain soaked through her clothes, but it was not the cold water that chilled her, it was him.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was still chasing her, but at the moment, the distance between the two of them was increasing. The raven-haired girl rounded a corner and put on a new burst of speed. A moment later she spotted a darkened alley and, after chancing another look behind her, entered it – running straight into a rock solid body.

The force of the impact knocked her to the ground with a cry of surprise. The young woman looked around helplessly, knowing that running was out of the question and hiding was impossible. Her only chance was to attack him and pray to kami that he'd be caught off guard; it was a long shot, but it was all she had. With a surge of power she leapt to her feet and threw a hard punch at his head.

With lightening fast reflexes his hand shot up and caught her fist. He smiled sadistically as he crushed her hand with a sickening crunch. She screamed in pain.

"Now, now," the young man said with an evil chuckle, "that wasn't very nice." Then he pulled her forward by her destroyed hand and drove his knee into her stomach.

The woman fell to her knees, gasping for air and clutching the bloody lump of flesh and bone that had once been her hand; her attacker stared at her with cold ruthlessness in his eyes. His foot lashed out and sent her through the wall of a warehouse that made up part of the alley.

The dark haired woman rolled onto her stomach and gingerly pulled herself to her feet, warm, sticky blood flowed into her eyes from a long gash across her forehead. She hastily wiped the blood away with her good hand and tried to get her bearings.

"Looking for someone?" a harsh voice whispered from behind.

She spun and looked up at him wide eyed with fear. A vice-like hand clamped around her throat and lifted her off the ground effortlessly. Her one good hand struggled franticly to loosen his grip, but to no avail.

"W…why are…you doing…th…this?" she gasped. "I thought…you…lov…ed me." The already dark room was growing darker as she fought to stay conscious.

He felt his lips begin to pull back into a familiar sneer, but stopped and then looked around in confusion. Something wasn't right.

'_Kill her!'_ an angry voice commanded. He felt his hand start to tighten around her throat and her eyes bulged out as the pressure built.

But he didn't want to do it and with a surge of will power his hand began to open again. He wouldn't listen to that voice, not again, not anymore.

'_Kill her!'_

The dark haired warrior's eyes snapped open, his face slick with cold sweat and his chest heaving.

For a long time he lay in bed staring at the ceiling and trying to push the nightmare away. It took a while, but eventually it retreated far enough from his conscious mind that he could once again go about pretending it had never existed. With a tired sigh he rolled out of bed, quietly pulled on the training shorts which had landed on the bedside table when they were hastily discarded the night before, and then snatched up a small bottle as he walked to the other side of the room and opened the door to the balcony.

It was raining and he breathed in deeply, enjoying the smell of the wet grass and trees as his body began to relax after the nightmare while he sipped the water from the bottle.

Time slipped by unnoticed until two tan arms slid their way around his waist and up his chest as something very warm pressed against his lower back. He smiled but continued staring out over the city at the stormy, early morning sky.

After a minute or two, he felt something tiny push against his back from the middle of the warm spot and started to chuckle.

"I guess he must be an early riser, huh?"

"_She_ will be no such thing," Pan replied, giving his arm a light smack to let him know that he shouldn't even suggest such things.

"Care to make a wager?"

"On which part? The early riser or the she?"

"Either. Both. I'm confident I'll win regardless," Akira said as he glanced over his shoulder and smiled at her.

"What do you want if, by some miracle, you do win?"

"Same thing I always want," he laughed as he reached back and gave her bottom a light pinch.

"You're such a guy," she said with mock disgust as she rolled her eyes. The conversation lapsed into a comfortable silence and then Pan quietly asked, "The nightmare again?"

"It wasn't too bad," Akira replied quickly, "and it's been over a month since the last one."

"I thought Bulma said they would stop eventually."

"She said she _thought_ they would stop eventually, but at least they're not as frequent anymore and I'm not stuck in them like I used to be."

"It's been five years," Pan pointed out.

"Better to have a few nightmares every once in a while than live them like _he_ did." There was no need to specify which _he_ Akira was talking about.

Pan nodded and then grunted as a foot or hand gave her an unexpected kidney shot. "_She's_ a bit jumpy today; maybe she'll be ready to join us out here sometime soon."

Akira rolled his eyes. "I think _he_ will be waiting a few months still, don't rush him."

"Easy for you to say, you're not the one who looks like she swallowed a basketball and gets kicked all night."

Akira turned and looked his wife up and down appreciatively. "You look beautiful," he whispered, meaning it. He reached out and ran his hand along the smooth skin sticking out of her shirt and smiled again as what felt like a foot pressed back against it. "Why don't you go take a bath, that usually calms _him_ down, and I'll make breakfast."

She smiled at the idea and headed into the bathroom while Akira turned and looked back out at the city.

It had been five of the best years of his life, occasional nightmares aside, and he couldn't help but wonder if it was fair that he was allowed to enjoy it.

After the battle in the other timeline, he and the other Z Fighters who had been seriously injured were flown back to the remains of West Capital. From what he'd heard, he and Krillin had nearly died before they were placed into the healing tanks on the time machine, and the rest were only slightly better off.

Trunks had gone and explained the situation to Hercule and then the time traveling Z Fighters had rushed back to their own timeline in order to insure the possibility of resurrecting anyone who might not make it. It turned out that this was an unnecessary precaution as – against the odds – everyone pulled through one more time.

They were greeted joyfully by their families when they returned and those who needed it, or even looked like they might need it, were fussed over greatly as they were nursed back to perfect health.

A few weeks later, Bulma, as well as a few of the other Z Fighters, returned to Kanata's timeline with several boxes of capsulized supplies to help the war-torn planet get back on its feet. Mirai Hercule gratefully accepted the help and, from what Akira had heard, the planet would probably be getting back on its feet shortly. Bulma had informed him that his future counterpart was considered to be the second coming of Mr. Satan in the eyes of many, particularly one little girl who'd been reunited with mother and brother when the Arlean's human slaves found their way back to the remains of West Capital. Akira was glad that his other self, despite being the biggest bastard he'd ever met, had done some good in the end.

With the fighting resolved and the other timeline on its way to recovery, the Z Fighters – but mostly Bulma – had set about fixing the mess the Arlean had made in their own timeline. The deceased dictator-to-be had left nearly a dozen pregnant female insectiods (as well as many more who had not conceived) behind when he was killed and for a time they had lived on some enclosed Capsule Corp. property away from the large populations of humans. This was a temporary solution, however, as eventually something would have to be done with them. The answer came as a bit of a surprise to everyone when King Kai suggested that they be given the opportunity to relocate to the New Planet Namek.

The Nameks were more than willing to accept the freed slaves and their children and quickly went about teaching them to farm and take care of themselves. Many of the children of the Arlean grew to be relatively powerful warriors and eventually helped settle a larger area of the still-wild New Namek. In only five years the two species were quickly growing into a tight knit society that lived in peace both with each other and with the planet around them.

Trunks and Icalla were married two months after the return from the other timeline. Icalla, having now had her fist taste of being the significant other of one of Earth's protectors and going through the wait-and-see-if-they-all-lived with the other family members, actually moved the date up several weeks. She apparently decided that she would not allow any more aliens, clone armies, or kami-knows-what-else to try to make her a widow before she was a bride.

It was, of course, a beautiful wedding. Bulma, Chi Chi, Videl, Valese, and Marron cried, while Pan came close but refused to give in. Vegeta was careful to keep a bored expression on his face the whole time, though Pan would later tell Akira that she thought she saw him wipe at an eye (Vegeta claimed that Bulma had used too much hairspray and that the fumes had nearly blinded him… and then calmly explained that anyone who disagreed with his version of events would be unrecognizable when he was done 'sparing' with them). Kumo made quite the handsome ring bearer, though he gave many in the crowd quite the fright when half way down the aisle he decided that walking wasn't enough and floated the rest of the way, dragging Icalla's niece (who was the flower girl) into the air with him and through a couple of flips. Goten had tried to apologize to his friend, but Trunks just laughed and said that it was important to have funny things like that in weddings.

After the battle in the other timeline, Krillin decided that enough was enough and settled into fulltime retirement, except when something exciting – like an annual tournament or when his daughter brought home a new boyfriend – rolled around. During these times he would show why, despite his age, he was still one of the strongest fighters on the planet (though his ranking seemed to slip every time a new saiyan child was born). For the most part, he and Eighteen simply enjoyed their peaceful days on the island, him working on his tan, her looking exactly the same as always.

Uubu and Bra had been together for five years (though Uubu probably would have preferred to have been a bit quieter about it), and had caused quit a stir when Bra had announced that she was going to move in with him. There were questions about why they never bothered getting married, since they were going to live that way anyway. The general consensus was that Uubu didn't want to upset Vegeta (though living together seemed more likely to do that than getting married) and Bra didn't want her mother breathing down her neck about wedding plans so they just agreed to skip that part. Pan hypothesized that they had actually eloped and simply weren't going to bother telling anyone, but Akira felt that Bra wouldn't be willing to keep quiet about something like that.

His disbelief hadn't kept him from floating the idea past Trunks, though, and the lavender haired saiyan had gone and asked Uubu about it. Unfortunately, all he'd gotten from Goku's protégé was an uncommitting smile and a hasty retreat. Akira supposed that it probably didn't matter, they lived like they were married, so whether it was on a piece of paper or not was more of a technicality than anything… though he suspected Vegeta wasn't too happy about the arrangement. Still, even Vegeta didn't make too much commotion about it anymore.

And then there was he and Pan. A little over a year and a half after the war with the Arlean they had gotten engaged and then married a short time later. Pan taught at her grandfather's dojo and occasionally took some time out of her schedule to do a little crime fighting as her father and mother had done before her. Akira worked at Capsule Corp. helping with the testing and design of law enforcement equipment (it was generally accepted that anything that could take a low level ki blast could handle a few bullets here and there). He was well aware of the fact that the job was a bit pointless, and that he probably wouldn't have been given it if he weren't family, but it was a good way to kill time in between martial arts tournaments and gave him a reason to spar with Vegeta on a fairly frequent basis. While Vegeta still hadn't caught up to him in terms of raw power, even after five years, Akira was still unable to defeat his adopted father when they battled with even power levels.

He really had everything he could have asked for in life and then, during the most recent Tenkaichi Budoukia Pan had informed him that she was "late." After she explained exactly what it was she was late for, and just what the meant to him, he had promptly gone out and lost spectacularly to Kumo in the opening round. He dimly remembered walking out to the ring, and was relatively sure he'd said something to the little boy before the match had started, but then he'd caught sight of Pan over Kumo's shoulder, and the next thing he knew he was sprawled out on the grass and the little boy was doing cartwheels around the ring. Had he not been so busy running back to his wife to hug her and swing her around in excitement, he would have been pretty upset with himself for making such a poor showing… Vegeta and Kumo certainly would never let him forget it.

And now, here they were, only a few months away from becoming parents. It was frightening, and exciting and left him feeling a bit ill whenever he really thought about what the little bulge (that was quickly becoming not so little) in Pan's stomach meant. Life was good. Life was scary. And it wasn't really supposed to have happened this way.

Even after five years, he couldn't believe he was living the life that he woke up to every day. It didn't seem fair, somehow, that his future self had gone through hell and back, and Akira was reaping all of the rewards for Kanata's hard work. Not that he would trade with Kanata, but there were times when he wondered what had become of his future self. Did he still think it was worth it? Was he with his Pan… or alone?

Akira shook his head and gave one last look out at the city which history had originally decreed should have been a bombed out graveyard and whispered a prayer of thanks to his other self and then he headed inside and began cooking breakfast for three.

ooo

The other future, just after the War for Earth

Pain ripped through Kanata's body as his life force exploded from his body and then there was nothing. The pain was gone. The Arlean was no longer writhing in his arms. There was nothing but white all around him.

For a moment, Kanata was disoriented, but then the light faded and he found himself standing in a long line of clouds for the second time in his existence.

He shook his head and sighed, or at least tried to. The shaking of his head moved his entire body. He looked down at himself and saw that he was no longer himself, or at least was no longer in possession of the body he usually associated with himself. He, like those around him, was nothing more than a fluffy white cloud, hovering a short distance above the ground.

Was it because he'd destroyed his body as his last act on Earth? Or was it simply because he wasn't deserving of keeping his body this time around?

If he remembered correctly, Vegeta had gotten his body back, even after self destructing, so the latter seemed the most likely… but Vegeta had also been borderline evil at the time, so there was a chance that his lack of form was simply because no one had seen fit to rescue his flesh before it was incinerated.

He floated higher into the air and looked down the line leading to the palace; he was going to be waiting for a while.

As he hovered in the line, slowly inching his way towards his punishment, he continued to ponder his situation. Why had they taken his body (if that was really the case), but had allowed Frieza, Cell, and every other villain Goku and company had ever defeated to retain theirs? Did you need a body to be punished in Hell? He was certain he'd seen a few clouds floating around down there during his short visit… but clearly there wasn't a hard and fast rule that said you had to lose your body when you died, even if you'd been "evil."

He turned the subject over and over in his mind as he slowly moved forward and then a suddenly he was in front of the great desk with King Yemma peering down at him.

Perhaps they had taken his body because they feared he would pound the large ogre into the ground and then wonder off. Was such a thing possible? He was stronger than Yemma, of that he was certain, but it couldn't really be that easy, could it? A part of him wished he had his body back so he could find out.

Yemma stared at him for a long moment and then sighed, "Akira, Akira, Akira, it's been a while and you've been busy."

Kanata remained silent, waiting patiently for the verdict he knew was on its way.

"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" the judge of the dead asked curiously.

"What should I say?"

"You could start by explaining your actions, this is a trial of sorts after all," King Yemma said as he leaned back in his enormous chair.

"I killed a lot of people so I could bring back the ones that were important to me… plus a few that I just didn't like."

"That's it?"

Kanata's eyes narrowed, or at least it felt like they did, he wasn't completely certain that he had literal eyes anymore. "Why are you asking me all these questions?"

"I'm a judge, how can I pass judgment if I don't have all the facts?" King Yemma asked with a small smirk that didn't move past his large red lips.

"You didn't ask questions last time," Kanata pointed out, "you just sent me on my merry little way."

King Yemma leaned forward and placed his elbows on his wooden desk and then cracked his knuckles thoughtfully. The sound was like a rolling wave of thunder echoing through the room. "Last time you hadn't had anything to do with 741,564,321 deaths. The situation is a little different."

Kanata was quiet for a few seconds and then asked, "That few?"

Yemma shot his a reproachful glare and shook his head is disgust before saying, "So, the question still remains, why? Why kill so many people to bring back a handful? You killed about 35 million people for every _ONE_ you were trying to revive, doesn't that seem a bit…" he paused for a moment, searching for the right word, and then settled on, "idiotic?"

Again Kanata was quiet, considering the question and then said, "I would have killed 800 million more, if it would have done any good."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Does it matter? You already know what you have to do," the saiyan cloud retorted.

"Oh?" the large ogre sat up straight and tightened his tie with a quick, easy jerk. "Since you seem to know so much about my job, perhaps you'd care to enlighten me as to what my decision has to be?"

Kanata would have looked confused, if it was possible, and it showed in his voice. "You're sending me to hell, right? I mean, I'm probably one of the biggest mass murderers to come through here in a while…"

"You might be surprised," King Yemma countered with a smile.

Kanata shook his whole cloud body in annoyance. "Whatever," he grunted, "I still killed plenty of people and they all deserve justice. Just do you're job and send me where I belong."

The red ogre shrugged and snapped his giant fingers at an aid who hurriedly handed him a folder with the word "Akira" clearly printed on it. The folder was stuffed to the point that odd pages fluttered out of it as it was passed and still more spilled out when it was opened and King Yemma began glancing through it. The aid quickly rushed about the room retrieving the escaped pages, Yemma kept reading without seeming to notice how much information had fallen out.

As he read, Kanata could hear him mutter, "…interesting…" every couple of seconds as he ran a hand through his thick, black beard. The saiyan sincerely hoped that the ogre didn't take this long with the majority of the cases that came before him, because it didn't seem like anyone would ever reach their final resting place at this pace.

Finally, after hearing the word 'interesting' nearly a dozen times, he could take no more of it. "What? What is so damn interesting? Just make your judgment already!"

King Yemma looked down at him and rolled his eyes. "You mortals are far too impatient," he grumbled, "Do you really have some pressing engagement that I'm keeping you from? You're dead, sit down and shut up."

Kanata opened his mouth to tell the ogre exactly what he thought of the judging of the dead process and its judge, but found that no sound would escape his little cloud body.

Yemma smiled wickedly, "You didn't think I got this job just because I'm big and fast, did you? Right here, standing before me, even if you had your body you'd be as week as a newborn unless I said otherwise." For a while he continued to smile down at the fuming, but silent, cloud and then set the folder down. "You saiyans have always been tough cases, Vegeta might have been worse the second time around, but you're a close second.

"You saw all of your friends and family die, and blamed yourself, unfairly, I might add… so any crimes you committed right there could have gone down as grief induced insanity and some leniency might have been shown for them, but you… you took insanity to a whole new level. It's hard to think someone went temporarily insane for a decade, but you make me almost want to believe it… almost.

"The fact is, you knew exactly what you were doing. You knew the consequences of your every action. You knew what would happen to Earth, you knew what would happen on every planet you stepped foot on, and you knew what the ultimate consequences would be, probably even hoped for a one way trip to the Home For Infinite Losers."

Kanata couldn't make any noise, but he could still roll his eyes or at least roll his vision, he wasn't quite sure if he actually had eyes or not anymore.

"Up until a week ago, you were an easy case. You die, I send you where you belong, both of us are happy. But then you had to take a little trip through time…"

The saiyan was now growing confused once again. Where exactly was this all going, anyway?

"According to your file, every single person – and then some – that you killed in this timeline, you saved in the other. You saved your friends. You saved Cypress. You saved all of those planets that you would have conquered for Heata. You saved millions of humans who would have died in Dasala's conquest of Earth. You saved the Nameks. You even had a hand, however reluctantly, in saving Dasala's children and the poor mothers of those children. So tell me, what do you think that means?"

Kanata couldn't answer, so he gave his best approximation to a shrug.

"Would you say that everything evened out?" Yemma asked, leaning back in his chair and stroking his beard once more. "That the scales measuring the good and evil in your life are balanced because you saved the lives you took?"

Another shrug.

"Would you say that you're even a bit of a hero for going through all of this? For making it so that history was changed?"

Kanata didn't shrug this time. No matter what he'd done elsewhere, he'd still taken millions of innocent lives, allowed his friends to die while he cowered in the mountains, and lived a rather… unsavory life while working for Heata. He wasn't a hero, not in his book anyway.

"I'm no hero," he said, surprising himself both by the fact that he could speak once again and the fact that he _had_ spoken. "It doesn't matter what happened over there, I killed a lot of people and justice needs to be served."

"Well, at least you've finally got your head on straight," Yemma glanced down at the cloud and chuckled, "well, you know what I mean. So then, how do I judge you? Are the lives you took more important than the lives you saved even if, technically, they're the same lives? Does the fact that you saved all those lives mean that the lives you took in this timeline don't count because you didn't kill them in a different reality? Do you see the problem I'm facing?"

"If you're having trouble making up your mind, I can tell you where to send me and then you can get back to doing your job," Kanata offered with a voice that carried a scowl, even if his face couldn't.

"And you think you should be allowed to make that decision? The person who hates himself more than he hates the creature who orchestrated the deaths of his friends should decide his eternal fate?" The large ogre smiled, closed the folder, and once again leaned back in his chair, causing it to creak under the strain of his enormous weight. "Sorry, I'll have to pass on your offer."

"Then make your decision."

King Yemma closed his eyes and sighed. "Have you ever heard that the single greatest act of love a person can show is to lay down his life for another? It's amazing the transgressions that selfless love can cover up. And yet, that sort of love is so hard to find. Can you selflessly love a woman? Or a pet? Or even a friend? A lot of people might say yes, but if that woman, or pet, or friend betrayed them over and over, chances are their love would vanish sooner or later. Even strong love between husband and wife often times has unspoken conditions to it. 'You must be faithful,' 'You must love me,' 'You must fix my gravity machine when I tell you to.'

"But giving up your life for a stranger? That's a bit different, isn't it? How can you expect that stranger to be faithful to you? Or to love you? Or to fix your gravity machine? They can't, they probably won't, and they most likely don't know how. And yet, you gave up your life for a couple thousand of them, didn't you? Sure, your friends were involved, but you could have ended it without them if you'd chosen a more cloak and dagger approach to your final battle and they had the ability to flee to their timeline if they needed to. The only people you really and truly died to save, were those few remaining humans on Earth."

"I died for revenge," Kanata pointed out.

"After a decade of military training, surely you learned of other forms of attack that didn't involve announcing your presence to the army that had you hopelessly outnumbered. If you'd wanted to, you could have snuck into Dasala's palace and killed him – you look just like all of his guards after all – but had you done that and then ended your life, you couldn't guarantee that the remaining population of Earth would be safe from any clones who weren't completely dependent on him for life. You had to insure that all of the clones were taken care of as well, didn't you? You died for a bunch of people you didn't know, and that was ultimately where you found redemption," King Yemma smiled as the last words slipped past his lips.

Kanata took an angry step forward and pointed at the large ogre. "You can't do this! This isn't justice! This isn't what was supposed to happen!" And then his eyes widened at the sight of his hand, which began to shake.

"I didn't have very much to do with this decision," Yemma smiled, glancing to the side as a group of people, and one Kai, popped into existence, "if you want to blame someone, blame yourself – you're good at that – or, more appropriately, blame…"

Kanata stopped listening and turned towards the new arrivals as well, his eyes widening at the sight of one in particular as his throat suddenly constricted. He took a hesitant step towards her, but stopped, looking down at his feet and seeing his face staring up at him from the shining marble. He didn't deserve this, it wasn't right.

But he wanted it. So much that it hurt, he wanted it.

"They say," Yemma said to no one in particular as he looked out over the line of clouds waiting to here where they were to be sent, "that Jouten loves all of creation, even the most vile of villains, and calls into the darkness for all to return to the light… most don't heed that call, but a few – the lucky ones, maybe – find that they aren't quite the lost causes they envisioned themselves to be."

Kanata, now Akira once again, didn't get a chance to wonder at the large ogre's words before he was enveloped in the hug he hadn't even been able to dream about in what seemed to have been a lifetime. Tears ran down his cheeks, passing over scars that no longer mattered and splashed down on the shiny tile.

"Welcome home," Pan, his Pan, whispered as her lips found his.

The End.

o

o

A/N: Finally. This chapter was one of the toughest, I think. Mostly because Kanata's eternal destiny was hard to argue out. I knew I didn't want to send him to hell (this story was sort of a story of redemption, after all), but at the same time I was kind of stuck. I mean, can you punish someone for killing a bunch of people, even if he saved them later? And do sins/good deeds in other timelines count against/for you? I felt a bit like John Kerry, voting for something before I voted against it! (Ah, politics, the art of using a lot of words to say nothing at all) Still, this was how I wanted things to end, and I think this might be better than my last epilogue which I hated with a burning passion. I don't hate this one, so that's a good thing. Anyway, I'm done, and that's what counts. I think this was it for me in the realm of epic DBZ stories. I might do a one shot or maybe a very short chapter story (a Vegeta-Bulma get together has intrigued me a little), but no more of this length (at least I can say that I wrote the longest DBZ story on this site, for the moment anyway). I'm too burned out on DBZ to write anything of any substantial length again. And certainly I'll never do an OC story again (especially in dbz where they have to come in as demi-gods to even have a chance of competing physically with anyone). Most likely, once I've recovered mentally, I'll write for a different section, Naruto, Psychic Academy, Kenshin, Starwars, anything but dragonball Z… for now, at least.

Thanks for all the support and for hanging in there as the wait time between chapters grew longer and longer. Seriously, your reviews are the only reason this story went anywhere. Thanks.


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